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Heat pump vs furnace in Teller County, Colorado

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Which costs less to run in Teller County?

An outdoor condenser unit on a concrete pad at night beside a dark horizontal-lap sided wall, with a wall-mounted disconnect box and refrigerant line above it, lit from overhead.

Heat pump

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

A beige residential furnace with a louvered upper panel stands against a dark blue basement wall, with a metal flue pipe rising from its top and copper and steel pipes running along the 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?

  • Heats and cools in one system

    A heat pump runs the same way all year. It pulls heat into the house in winter and pushes it out in summer.

    A living room with a beige sofa holding navy and light blue cushions and a dark knit throw, a wooden coffee table with a bowl, books and a mug, a jute rug, wooden sideboard with a lamp and plants, and a large window with linen curtains showing green garden foliage.

  • Steady, even comfort

    Instead of short bursts of heat, it keeps a gentle, steady output going. The house stays at one comfortable temperature.

    A golden retriever sleeps on a patterned rug beside a navy wingback chair with a knit throw and open book, next to a lit floor lamp, a side table with a mug and small plant, gray built-in shelving, and a window showing snow outside.

  • No gas line, nothing burning in the house

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

    A kitchen with navy cabinets, white marble-look counters and backsplash, a stainless range hood over an induction cooktop with a kettle, a wall oven with a striped towel, utensils, cutting boards, potted plants, a bowl of green apples and blue hydrangeas in the foreground.

Where does a furnace shine?

  • Strong, steady heat in hard cold

    Winter nights here average 10°F, and a furnace doesn't lose ground when it gets that cold. It burns gas to make heat, so it keeps putting out the same hot air whether it's mild or well below zero.

    A blue two-story house with lit windows and a snow-covered roof at dusk, with a cleared paved walkway between deep snowbanks, a lamp post at left, and snow-laden conifers behind.

  • Runs on the gas most homes here already use

    Most homes in Teller County already heat with gas, 56.9% of them. If a gas line is already run to your house, a furnace just uses what's there.

    A row of attached townhouses with brick and painted facades, front stoops with black metal railings, and exterior gas meters, beside a sidewalk with patchy snow and bare trees.

  • Proven, simple, easy to get serviced

    Gas furnaces have heated homes for generations. Almost every HVAC tech knows them inside and out.

    A gloved hand holds a white pleated air filter in front of wooden storage shelves and a furnace with metal ductwork.

What the cold actually does to a heat pump here

Winter in Teller County is the whole question. The heat runs eleven months a year, and the overnight low averages 10°F through December, January and February. That's not an occasional cold snap. It's the normal night.

A standard heat pump starts losing ground well before it gets that cold. Below 40°F it puts out less heat than its rating says. Below about 35°F it often needs backup heat to make up the difference. Here, every single night that drops to freezing or below, about 225 of them a year, is already past both marks. The average winter night doesn't brush up against the edge of what a heat pump handles well. It sits well past it.

About 25 nights a year here reach 0°F or colder. That's the range where a standard heat pump is putting out only a fraction of its rated heat, and leaning hardest on backup. Cold climate heat pumps are built for this. To earn the ENERGY STAR Cold Climate label, a heat pump has to keep at least 70 percent of its 47°F heating capacity at 5°F and still produce 1.75 units of heat per unit of electricity at that temperature, verified by outside testing, not the manufacturer's own numbers. Field tests of prototype cold-climate models back this up: backup heat covered only a small share of the load between 0°F and 35°F, and running on backup alone was rare even above 0°F. The gap between a standard heat pump and a cold-climate one matters most in a county where more than half the nights of the heating season are at or below freezing.

A small dark blue house with white trim and a light blue front door, surrounded by deep snow and conifers, with a snow-covered mountain in the background.

Cost, and what's already installed

A gas furnace is cheaper to run here. At Colorado's average fuel prices, a furnace built to the federal minimum makes the same heat for $1.26 per 100,000 Btu against $1.99 for a heat pump built to its federal minimum, at least 36 percent less. That gap doesn't include whatever a heat pump spends on backup heat on the coldest nights, so in practice it runs wider here than the number alone suggests.

What's already in the house matters too. Utility gas heats 56.9% of homes in Teller County, a little under three in five. Propane heats another 18.8%, about one in five. Electricity heats 14%, close to the statewide rate of 25.6%, which means Teller County leans on gas and propane harder than Colorado does overall. If your house already has a gas line and a furnace, replacing it with another furnace keeps you on the setup the rest of the county already runs on.

There's no cooling season here to change that math. No month is warm enough to call for air conditioning, so a furnace's inability to cool costs you nothing, and a heat pump's ability to cool isn't paying for itself against summer bills the way it would somewhere hot. The case for a heat pump in Teller County has to be made on winter performance and on not wanting a gas line in the house, not on cooling. If a cold-climate model is on the table and the upfront cost works for you, it's built for nights like the ones here. If it's a standard heat pump, the numbers on this page describe a machine that's working hard for most of the year it runs.

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

A navy blue wood-sided house with a light blue front door and white-trimmed window, fronted by a snow-covered wooden deck, steps, railings, stacked firewood, a potted shrub, and a wall lantern, with conifers behind.

Common questions about heat pumps and furnaces

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

    It can, but a standard one struggles once temperatures drop. Below 40°F its heat output falls short of its rating, and below about 35°F it often needs backup. Teller County's overnight low averages 10°F in winter and drops to 0°F or below about 25 nights a year, so a cold-climate model, rated to keep most of its capacity down to 5°F, holds up better here than a standard one. Field tests of cold-climate models found backup heat covered only a small share of the heat needed between 0°F and 35°F.

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

    Most homes here need it. A standard heat pump's output falls short of its rating below 40°F and it often needs backup below about 35°F. The average overnight low across December, January and February here is 10°F, so most winter nights fall below both marks.

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

    Yes, and here it's a common setup. The heat pump handles the milder nights, and the furnace carries the house once temperatures drop toward the marks that slow a heat pump down. With an average winter low of 10°F in Teller County, and about 225 nights a year at or below freezing, your furnace would still have real work to do most winter nights.

  • Is a heat pump cheaper to run than a furnace in Teller County?

    No, a gas furnace runs cheaper here. The furnace costs $1.26 per 100,000 Btu of heat against $1.99 for a heat pump, at Colorado's average fuel prices. Utility gas already heats close to three in five homes in Teller County, more than electricity or propane.

A person's hand in a blue long-sleeved shirt touches a white wall-mounted thermostat with a blank screen and four buttons, with a living room containing a stone fireplace, window, and an open tool bag visible in the background.

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