Heat Pump Payback in Andover, KS
Heat pump vs. gas furnace in Andover, KS
Andover technically pencils out, but only past the point the equipment would need replacing anyway. $5,500 is what Andover would pay extra to go electric rather than replace the furnace and AC with the same again. Andover's residents would see roughly $161 a year back in running costs, putting the payback around 34.2 years. Andover's own numbers say this pencils out only in theory, not in practice.
Checking a different city
Landed on Andover by mistake, or want to compare it against somewhere else? Search the other 3206 cities below.
Why Andover's climate drives this number
Degree days tell the story here: Andover racks up 3737 heating degree days each year (base 65°F), and summers are hot enough that cooling matters as much as heating, with 1733 cooling degree days on the cooling side. -0.9°F is the figure equipment gets sized against here, the 99th-percentile cold snap, not an average day, with a low of -5.1°F in the 2024 station record. Worked through the model, that's a seasonal COP of 2.68 on the cold-climate unit fit for this climate. A cold-climate unit is the right call in Andover, below 25°F design temperature, a standard heat pump leans hard on electric-resistance backup, which erases most of the savings. Climate figures trace to the nearest NOAA station, Colonel James Jabara Airport, 6.2 miles from Andover.
What it actually costs to run, year to year
Electricity use for heating alone comes out to about 3,531 kWh a year on the 2000-square-foot reference house; folding in cooling puts the electric bill near $754 a year. That compares with roughly 39 Mcf a year of gas at Andover's $14.81 per-Mcf rate, about $914 a year with the old AC included, against a local electricity rate of 15.05¢/kWh. Priced as a standalone purchase, with a working furnace ripped out early, payback would take longer than the 15-year equipment life. Measured against the like-for-like replacement instead, a household here ends 15 years $3,090 behind.
How sensitive Andover's result is to prices
This result holds unless electricity climbs above 20.9¢/kWh (it is 15.05¢ now) or gas drops below $10.68 per Mcf (now $14.81); past either point, gas becomes the cheaper fuel in Andover. When quotes arrive, compare the heat pump price with a like-for-like furnace and AC replacement: at $161 a year saved, a difference under $1,127 pays back within 7 years here, and under $1,610 within 10.
The other scenario: no gas furnace to begin with
Not every home in Andover has gas service. Compared with baseboard or electric-furnace resistance heat, the numbers shift in the heat pump’s favor. Switching saves about $1,008 a year here, a heat pump moving heat rather than generating it needs far less electricity than resistance coils, so the extra $10,000 spent up front comes back in about 9.9 years.
How Andover compares nationally
Ranked against the other 3206 cities covered, Andover comes in at 1656 for heating severity, 1 would be the coldest place in the dataset, and 2194 by population, where 1 is largest. That's the middle third for winter severity among the cities covered here.
Next step if you live in Andover
About 17,000 people live in Andover, Kansas, 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.
Get quotes from local HVAC contractors before deciding.
More on how this number was built
Every constant behind this page, the 2.68 seasonal COP, the degree-day corrections, the equipment costs, is documented in the methodology guide. Andover's -0.9°F design temperature falls on the cold side of the 25°F cutoff the cold-climate unit guide walks through.