Colorado Heating Pros

Heat pump vs furnace in Rio Grande County, Colorado

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Installers who work on both

Which costs less to run in Rio Grande County?

An outdoor air conditioner condenser unit on a concrete pad beside a dark blue horizontal-siding wall at night, with conduit and a small electrical box on the wall and grass surrounding the pad.

Heat pump

To heat your home here$1.99per 100,000 Btu

A beige sheet-metal furnace stands on a concrete basement floor against a dark blue painted block wall, with galvanized flue ducts rising to the ceiling and a flexible metal conduit and PVC pipe at its left side.

Furnace

To heat your home here$1.26per 100,000 Btu

At Colorado's gas and electricity prices, a gas furnace makes the same heat as a heat pump for at least 36% less.

Btu stands for British thermal unit, the standard measure of heat energy.

Where does a heat pump shine?

  • No gas line, nothing burning in the house

    A heat pump runs on electricity alone. Nothing burns inside the house.

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  • Steady, even comfort

    It eases up and down with the weather. There are fewer swings between too warm and too cool.

    A golden retriever sleeps on a cream shag rug in a dim living room with a lit wood stove, an armchair with a blue throw and open book, a lamp and mug on a side table, built-in bookshelves, and a window showing snowy evergreens.

  • Heats and cools in one system

    One machine handles the heat in winter and the cooling in summer. There's no second system to buy or keep up.

    Living room with a light blue sectional sofa, linen and navy pillows, a wooden coffee table with potted plants, a large window with a beige roman shade overlooking green trees and flowering shrubs, a navy built-in bookshelf, a blue ceramic table lamp, and a woven chair in the foreground.

Where does a furnace shine?

  • Strong, steady heat in hard cold

    Nights here average 7°F through December, January and February. A furnace burns gas to make heat, so it keeps putting out the same hard heat no matter how cold it gets outside.

    A two-story dark blue house with white trim, lit windows, a balcony and a stone chimney at dusk, with a shoveled path through deep snow lined by small lanterns, bare trees at left and a snow-covered evergreen at right.

  • Pairs with any central AC

    Most central air systems are built around a furnace. The two share the blower, the ducts and the thermostat.

    A metal louvered floor register set into a light wood plank floor near a glass door with sheer curtains, beside a gray cabinet with a round knob.

  • Proven, simple, easy to get serviced

    Parts are easy to find and most repairs are routine. Getting one fixed rarely means waiting on a specialist.

    A gloved hand holds a white pleated air filter in front of a furnace and ductwork, with wooden shelving holding storage bins and a potted plant in the background.

Why winter here decides this

Your winter low averages 7°F. A standard heat pump starts falling short of its rated heat below 40°F, and by about 35°F it usually needs backup heat to keep the house warm. Every night here that drops to freezing or below, about 220 of them a year, is already under both of those marks. The heat runs here in every month of the year, and about 35 nights a winter reach 0°F or colder.

That doesn't rule out a heat pump. It rules out a standard one. A heat pump built for cold carries the ENERGY STAR Cold Climate mark, which means it's tested to produce at least 1.75 units of heat for every unit of electricity at 5°F, and to hold at least 70 percent of its warm-weather capacity at that same temperature. A two-winter field test of prototype cold-climate models backs this up: backup heat covered only a small share of the heating load between 0°F and 35°F, and running on backup alone was rare even at 0°F. So the real question in this county isn't whether a heat pump can work. It's whether the one you're looking at is built for this cold or built to the federal minimum.

A furnace doesn't carry that question at all. It makes its full rated heat whether it's 30°F or 20 below, because burning gas doesn't get harder in the cold. That's the plain case for a furnace here: no cold-weather rating to check, no backup system to size for the worst night of the year.

A dark blue two-story house with white trim and a covered front porch stands behind snow-covered ground, with tall pine trees and a snowy mountain ridge under a clear blue sky.

What each one costs to run

At Colorado's own prices, a furnace is cheaper to run than a standard heat pump here, $1.26 against $1.99 for the same 100,000 Btu of heat. That gap is real, but it's built on a heat pump at the federal minimum, with nothing added for the backup heat it would lean on during your coldest nights. A cold-climate model would close part of that gap by running more efficiently in the cold this county actually gets. How much depends on the specific unit, not on anything this page can tell you.

What fuel is actually run to your house matters too. Utility gas heats 36.7% of homes here, electricity heats 22.7%, and propane heats 23.4%, close to a quarter. Propane cost $24.16 per million Btu in Colorado in 2024, well above both natural gas and electricity. A propane furnace still delivers full rated heat on a cold night the way any furnace does, but it won't beat a heat pump on running cost the way a gas furnace does. Check which one serves your house before you weigh the cost side of this.

There's essentially no cooling season here to weigh against any of it. A furnace only heats, so central air comes as a separate system next to it. A heat pump heats and cools from the same equipment, which counts for less in a county that rarely needs cooling at all. If keeping a gas line and a separate AC simple is worth something to you, that points to a furnace. If you'd rather not burn anything in the house, a heat pump can do the job here, but it needs to be a cold-climate model, not the standard one behind the $1.99 figure.

Sources: NOAA nClimDiv · NOAA 1991–2020 seasonal normals · EIA SEDS 2024 · 10 CFR 430.32 · PNNL Building America guide · PNNL-37127 field study · ENERGY STAR product criteria · Census ACS 2020–2024

A single-story navy blue house with white trim, a one-car garage and a concrete driveway, surrounded by snow, pine trees, a wood fence, and snow-capped mountains in the background.

Common questions about heat pumps and furnaces

  • Can a heat pump heat a house through a Colorado winter?

    Yes, but a standard heat pump won't do it alone. Below 40°F a standard heat pump makes less heat than its rating, and below about 35°F it often needs backup heat to carry the house. The average overnight low here is 7°F, so it needs that backup most nights from December through February.

  • Do I need backup heat with a heat pump here?

    Most winters here, yes. The overnight low averages 7°F across December, January and February, well under the 35°F mark where a standard heat pump starts leaning on backup heat. A cold-climate model holds more of its capacity down near 5°F, but check what it's rated to do at your coldest nights before you count on it alone.

  • Can I keep my furnace and add a heat pump?

    Yes, and it's a common setup. The furnace carries the house on the coldest nights, the roughly 35 a year that hit 0°F or below, while the heat pump handles the milder stretches. That way neither machine has to cover the whole range by itself.

  • What if my house heats with oil or propane?

    Propane heats about one in four homes in Rio Grande County, close to the national share, and a propane furnace works the same way a gas furnace does. Propane runs $24.16 per million Btu against natural gas at $10.09, so if a gas line reaches your house, switching to gas costs less to run. If it doesn't, a heat pump is worth comparing against propane since propane costs more per unit of heat than the electricity a heat pump uses.

A gloved worker in dark blue coveralls kneels beside a gray outdoor heat pump unit on a concrete pad, connecting insulated copper refrigerant lines to brass service valves, with pliers and a cordless drill lying on gravel in the foreground.

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