Is a heat pump worth it in Burlington?

In Burlington, the math is close enough that it comes down to how long you plan to stay. 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). That premium is recovered through $340 of lower running costs every year, landing the payback clock at roughly 10.3 years. It's a genuine toss-up here — Burlington's numbers don't point clearly either way.

Burlington's weather, in the numbers that matter

Burlington has a cold winter that leans hard on heating equipment — 5087 heating degree days a year against a 65°F base — and summers rarely ask much of an air conditioner, at 50 cooling degree days. Sizing runs off the design temperature, not the average day: 15.8°F here (record low 10.4°F), which works out to a seasonal COP of 3.08 for the cold-climate class of unit this climate calls for. Burlington 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, SKAGIT REGIONAL AIRPORT, 4 miles from Burlington.

The month-to-month numbers for Burlington

A 2000-square-foot house here would pull roughly 4,182 heating kilowatt-hours annually on top of cooling, totalling about $603 a year on electricity. The gas furnace it replaces burns roughly 53 Mcf a year at 17.62 per Mcf here, for a running cost near $943 a year (electricity here runs 14.27¢/kWh). Priced as a standalone purchase rather than against a like-for-like replacement, equipment payback runs about 39.7 years, for a 15-year net position $1,598 ahead.

The other scenario: no gas furnace to begin with

Not every home in Burlington 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 $1,244 a year, which recovers the extra $8,000 spent going electric in roughly 6.4 years.

Burlington against the rest of the country

Ranked against the other 3206 cities covered, Burlington comes in at 606 for heating severity — 1 would be the coldest place in the dataset — and 2996 by population, where 1 is largest. That's the coldest third of the dataset, where climate does most of the work behind this figure.

What to do with this number in Burlington

Burlington, Washington is home to about 10,945 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 Burlington, nothing is lost by holding off until the current equipment genuinely fails.

Line up a few local HVAC quotes before you decide.

More on how this number was built

Every constant behind this page — the 3.08 seasonal COP, the degree-day corrections, the equipment costs — is documented in the methodology guide. Burlington's 15.8°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.