Will a heat pump pay off in Bel Aire, KS?

In Bel Aire, the extra upfront cost technically comes back, just not before the equipment wears out. Against a like-for-like gas furnace and AC swap, going electric costs $3,500 more up front here (already netting out a $2,000 tax credit). Lower bills claw that back: about $161 saved annually, for a payback of roughly 21.8 years. Bel Aire's own numbers say this pencils out only in theory, not in practice.

Why Bel Aire's climate drives this number

3737 heating degree days pile up here every year, so Bel Aire has a real but manageable winter; the cooling side runs to 1733 cooling degree days, where summers are hot enough that cooling matters as much as heating. -0.9°F is the figure equipment gets sized against here — the 99th-percentile cold snap, not an average day — with a record low of -5.1°F on file. Worked through the model, that's a seasonal COP of 2.68 on the cold-climate unit fit for this climate. Below the 25°F line where a standard machine starts leaning on resistance backup, Bel Aire sits firmly in cold-climate territory, so that's the class of unit priced here. Source: NOAA station COLONEL JAMES JABARA ARPT, 2.5 miles from Bel Aire — the closest one on record.

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. Bel Aire's gas rate of 14.81 per Mcf, applied to the 39 Mcf a year the furnace burns, puts its running cost near $914 a year, against 15.05¢ per kWh for electricity. Looked at as a full purchase rather than an incremental one, payback here is roughly 84 years, leaving the 15-year total $1,090 behind.

Electric resistance heat in Bel Aire, compared

Plenty of homes in Bel Aire heat with electricity alone, no gas line involved. 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 $8,000 spent up front comes back in about 7.9 years.

Bel Aire against the rest of the country

Among 3206 cities, Bel Aire's winter puts it at rank 1658 for severity, while its size puts it at rank 3189 for population — 1 in both cases being the extreme. That's the middle third for winter severity among the cities covered here.

Next step for 10,066 people in Bel Aire

About 10,066 people live in Bel Aire, 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.

Ask a local HVAC contractor for a quote before committing either way.

Reading further on this page's numbers

The methodology guide walks through exactly how Bel Aire's 2.68 seasonal COP and the rest of this page's numbers get built. Bel Aire's -0.9°F design temperature is below the 25°F line, which is why a cold-climate unit is the right call here — see what that changes in the cold-climate unit guide.