Heat Pump Payback in Ammon, ID
Should Ammon switch to a heat pump?
Ammon is a place where a heat pump genuinely costs more to operate than the alternative. Swap a failed furnace and AC for a heat pump rather than buying like-for-like, and the extra cost here runs $5,500. Running costs here land $220 a year higher than the furnace it replaces, so that premium is never recovered. There's no spin on that: Ammon's numbers say wait.
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Ammon is one of 3206 cities covered here, each run through the same model. Search another below.
The climate behind Ammon's payback figure
Ammon has a cold winter that leans hard on heating equipment, 6714 heating degree days a year against a 65°F base, and summers add a moderate cooling load, at 545 cooling degree days. The 99% winter design temperature here, the cold snap equipment must be sized for, not the seasonal average, is 0°F, and the coldest daily reading in the 2024 station record was -14.1°F. That puts the seasonal coefficient of performance at 2.7 for the recommended cold-climate unit. A cold-climate unit is the right call in Ammon, below 25°F design temperature, a standard heat pump leans hard on electric-resistance backup, which erases most of the savings. These numbers come from Idaho Falls Regional Airport, the closest NOAA station, 6.1 miles out.
Ammon's running-cost comparison, in dollars
Modelled on a typical 2000-square-foot house, the heat pump draws about 6,297 kWh a year to keep it warm, plus cooling, for a combined electric bill near $847 a year. The gas furnace it replaces burns roughly 70 Mcf a year at $7.69 per Mcf here, for a running cost near $626 a year including the old AC (electricity here runs 12.52¢/kWh). With running costs higher every year, there is no payback at any purchase price; over 15 years, against a like-for-like replacement, a household here would end $8,805 behind.
How sensitive Ammon's result is to prices
The heat pump would become the cheaper option in Ammon if electricity fell to 8.9¢/kWh (from 12.52¢) or gas rose above $10.84 per Mcf (from $7.69). At today's prices a cheaper quote cannot rescue the gas comparison in Ammon, since there is no yearly saving to recover it from.
If your home heats with electric baseboard instead of gas
Not every home in Ammon has gas service. Against electric-resistance heat, baseboard or an electric furnace, both 100% efficient but still just resistance, the case for switching gets stronger here. The saving here runs about $1,370 a year, which recovers the extra $10,000 spent going electric in roughly 7.3 years.
How Ammon compares nationally
Ranked against the other 3206 cities covered, Ammon comes in at 59 for heating severity, 1 would be the coldest place in the dataset, and 1916 by population, where 1 is largest. That's the coldest third of the dataset, where climate does most of the work behind this figure.
Deciding what's next in Ammon, ID
About 20,095 people live in Ammon, Idaho, and every number on this page is what a contractor would actually work from when quoting a system here, the point isn't to replace that quote, it's to tell you whether to bother asking for one. Here, there's no cost penalty to waiting until your current furnace or AC actually needs replacing.
Ask a local HVAC contractor for a quote before committing either way.
More on how this number was built
Nothing above is a black box: the methodology guide shows the full arithmetic behind Ammon's 2.7 seasonal COP and payback figure. Ammon's 0°F design temperature falls on the cold side of the 25°F cutoff the cold-climate unit guide walks through.