Heat Pump Payback in Burien, WA
Burien, WA: the heat pump payback math
The payback math works in Burien on paper, past the equipment's own working life. Swap a failed furnace and AC for a heat pump rather than buying like-for-like, and the extra cost here runs $5,500. Lower bills claw that back: about $336 saved annually, for a payback of roughly 16.4 years. Burien's own numbers say this pencils out only in theory, not in practice.
Compare against another city
This runs the same numbers for 3206 US cities, not just Burien. Look one up here.
Why Burien's climate drives this number
4626 heating degree days pile up here every year, so Burien has a real but manageable winter; the cooling side runs to 260 cooling degree days, where summers rarely ask much of an air conditioner. The 99% winter design temperature here, the cold snap equipment must be sized for, not the seasonal average, is 19°F, and the coldest daily reading in the 2024 station record was 15.1°F. That puts the seasonal coefficient of performance at 3.16 for the recommended cold-climate unit. Burien needs the cold-climate class of unit: past a 25°F design temperature a standard heat pump falls back on resistance backup often enough to eat the savings. Climate figures trace to the nearest NOAA station, Seattle-Tacoma International, 2.6 miles from Burien.
What it actually costs to run, year to year
A 2000-square-foot house here would pull roughly 3,707 heating kilowatt-hours annually on top of cooling, totalling about $561 a year on electricity. The gas furnace it replaces burns roughly 48 Mcf a year at $17.62 per Mcf here, for a running cost near $897 a year including the old AC (electricity here runs 14.27¢/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 $454 behind.
What would change Burien's answer
This result holds unless electricity climbs above 23.6¢/kWh (it is 14.27¢ now) or gas drops below $10.64 per Mcf (now $17.62); past either point, gas becomes the cheaper fuel in Burien. When quotes arrive, compare the heat pump price with a like-for-like furnace and AC replacement: at $336 a year saved, a difference under $2,352 pays back within 7 years here, and under $3,360 within 10.
The other scenario: no gas furnace to begin with
Not every home in Burien has gas service. Compared with baseboard or electric-furnace resistance heat, the numbers shift in the heat pump’s favor. The saving here runs about $1,159 a year, which recovers the extra $10,000 spent going electric in roughly 8.6 years.
Burien against the rest of the country
Among 3206 cities, Burien's winter puts it at rank 1062 for severity, while its size puts it at rank 782 for population, 1 in both cases being the extreme. That's the coldest third of the dataset, where climate does most of the work behind this figure.
Next step if you live in Burien
About 52,046 people live in Burien, Washington, 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.
Line up a few local HVAC quotes before you decide.
More on how this number was built
Every constant behind this page, the 3.16 seasonal COP, the degree-day corrections, the equipment costs, is documented in the methodology guide. At a 19°F design temperature, Burien sits in cold-climate territory; the guide to that class of unit explains why.