Heat Pump Payback in Burlingame, CA
Heat pump vs. gas furnace in Burlingame, CA
In Burlingame, a heat pump would cost more to run each year than what you have now. Swap a failed furnace and AC for a heat pump rather than buying like-for-like, and the extra cost here runs $3,000. Unfortunately the electric bill outweighs the gas bill it replaces by about $30 a year here, so the extra spend stays unrecovered. That's Burlingame's own climate and rates talking, not a hedge or a caveat.
Checking a different city
This runs the same numbers for 3206 US cities, not just Burlingame. Look one up here.
Burlingame's weather, in the numbers that matter
Degree days tell the story here: Burlingame racks up 2665 heating degree days each year (base 65°F), and summers rarely ask much of an air conditioner, with 90 cooling degree days on the cooling side. 39.9°F is the figure equipment gets sized against here, the 99th-percentile cold snap, not an average day, with a low of 35.1°F in the 2024 station record. Worked through the model, that's a seasonal COP of 3.39 on the standard unit fit for this climate. Burlingame's winters don't get cold enough to need the cold-climate premium, a standard unit holds up fine. Source: NOAA station San Francisco International A, 2.1 miles from Burlingame, the closest one on record.
The yearly running costs in Burlingame
Electricity use for heating alone comes out to about 1,991 kWh a year on the 2000-square-foot reference house; folding in cooling puts the electric bill near $679 a year. Burlingame's gas rate of $22.01 per Mcf, applied to the 28 Mcf a year the furnace burns, puts the current furnace-and-AC running cost near $649 a year, against 32.83¢ per kWh for electricity. Because the heat pump costs more to run here, the gap only widens with time: $3,443 behind after 15 years compared with replacing the furnace and AC like-for-like.
What would change Burlingame's answer
For the verdict in Burlingame to flip, electricity would need to drop to about 31.3¢/kWh from 32.83¢, or gas climb past $23.07 per Mcf from $22.01. A utility offering a lower heat pump rate can change this. Until then, no quote price makes a heat pump pay back against gas in Burlingame; the case for one here rests on comfort, cooling, or replacing electric heat instead.
Electric resistance heat in Burlingame, compared
Not every home in Burlingame has gas service. Compared with baseboard or electric-furnace resistance heat, the numbers shift in the heat pump’s favor. Switching saves about $1,575 a year here, a heat pump moving heat rather than generating it needs far less electricity than resistance coils, so the extra $7,500 spent up front comes back in about 4.8 years.
Where Burlingame ranks in this dataset
Among 3206 cities, Burlingame's winter puts it at rank 2061 for severity, while its size puts it at rank 1320 for population, 1 in both cases being the extreme. That's the middle third for winter severity among the cities covered here.
Next step if you live in Burlingame
Burlingame, California is home to about 30,885 people, and the figures above are the same ones a local HVAC contractor uses to size and quote a system, this site doesn't guess where a real quote would land, it just tells you whether it's worth asking for one. In Burlingame, nothing is lost by holding off until the current equipment genuinely fails.
Get quotes from local HVAC contractors before deciding.
Reading further on this page's numbers
The methodology guide walks through exactly how Burlingame's 3.39 seasonal COP and the rest of this page's numbers get built. Burlingame is one of the cities where running costs land higher every year, not just slower to pay back, the guide to where this happens lays out why.