Canby, OR: the heat pump payback math
This one's marginal in Canby: it only clears if you stay long enough. $3,500 is what Canby would pay extra to go electric rather than replace the furnace and AC with the same again, once the $2,000 federal credit is applied. Canby's residents would see roughly $256 a year back in running costs, putting the payback around 13.7 years. It's a genuine toss-up here — Canby's numbers don't point clearly either way.
Canby's weather, in the numbers that matter
Canby has a real but manageable winter — 4286 heating degree days a year against a 65°F base — and summers add a moderate cooling load, at 518 cooling degree days. 18°F is the figure equipment gets sized against here — the 99th-percentile cold snap, not an average day — with a record low of 16°F on file. Worked through the model, that's a seasonal COP of 3.13 on the cold-climate unit fit for this climate. Below the 25°F line where a standard machine starts leaning on resistance backup, Canby sits firmly in cold-climate territory, so that's the class of unit priced here. Source: NOAA station AURORA STATE AIRPORT, 4.1 miles from Canby — the closest one on record.
The month-to-month numbers for Canby
Modelled on a typical 2000-square-foot house, the heat pump draws about 3,467 kWh a year to keep it warm, plus cooling, for a combined electric bill near $592 a year. Canby's gas rate of 16.71 per Mcf, applied to the 45 Mcf a year the furnace burns, puts its running cost near $848 a year, against 15.14¢ per kWh for electricity. Buy it outright, not incrementally, and payback stretches to 52.8 years; over 15 years the net position sits $336 ahead.
If your home heats with electric baseboard instead of gas
Plenty of homes in Canby heat with electricity alone, no gas line involved. Against electric-resistance heat — baseboard or an electric furnace, both 100% efficient but still just resistance — the case for switching gets stronger here. The saving here runs about $1,153 a year, which recovers the extra $8,000 spent going electric in roughly 6.9 years.
How Canby compares nationally
Among 3206 cities, Canby's winter puts it at rank 1341 for severity, while its size puts it at rank 2097 for population — 1 in both cases being the extreme. That's the middle third for winter severity among the cities covered here.
Deciding what's next in Canby, OR
Canby, Oregon is home to about 18,027 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 Canby, 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 3.13 seasonal COP, the degree-day corrections, the equipment costs — is documented in the methodology guide. Canby's 18°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.