Heat Pump Payback in Draper, UT
Is a heat pump worth it in Draper?
The payback math works in Draper 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. Draper's residents would see roughly $110 a year back in running costs, putting the payback around 50.2 years. Draper's own numbers say this pencils out only in theory, not in practice.
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Why Draper's climate drives this number
Degree days tell the story here: Draper racks up 4667 heating degree days each year (base 65°F), and summers are hot enough that cooling matters as much as heating, with 1804 cooling degree days on the cooling side. 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 12.2°F. That puts the seasonal coefficient of performance at 3.16 for the recommended cold-climate unit. A cold-climate unit is the right call in Draper, below 25°F design temperature, a standard heat pump leans hard on electric-resistance backup, which erases most of the savings. Climate figures trace to the nearest NOAA station, Salt Lake City International, 20.2 miles from Draper.
The yearly running costs in Draper
Modelled on a typical 2000-square-foot house, the heat pump draws about 3,740 kWh a year to keep it warm, plus cooling, for a combined electric bill near $692 a year. Draper's gas rate of $10.19 per Mcf, applied to the 49 Mcf a year the furnace burns, puts the current furnace-and-AC running cost near $802 a year, against 13.12¢ per kWh for electricity. Buying outright rather than at replacement time stretches payback to longer than the 15-year equipment life. Over 15 years, compared with a like-for-like replacement, the heat pump leaves you $3,856 behind.
How sensitive Draper's result is to prices
This result holds unless electricity climbs above 16.8¢/kWh (it is 13.12¢ now) or gas drops below $7.94 per Mcf (now $10.19); past either point, gas becomes the cheaper fuel in Draper. When quotes arrive, compare the heat pump price with a like-for-like furnace and AC replacement: at $110 a year saved, a difference under $770 pays back within 7 years here, and under $1,100 within 10.
The other scenario: no gas furnace to begin with
Not every home in Draper has gas service. Swap the comparison to resistance heat instead of gas, and Draper's answer improves. The saving here runs about $1,165 a year, which recovers the extra $10,000 spent going electric in roughly 8.6 years.
Where Draper ranks in this dataset
Ranked against the other 3206 cities covered, Draper comes in at 1028 for heating severity, 1 would be the coldest place in the dataset, and 815 by population, where 1 is largest. That's the coldest third of the dataset, where climate does most of the work behind this figure.
Deciding what's next in Draper, UT
About 50,166 people live in Draper, Utah, 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.
Get quotes from local HVAC contractors before deciding.
Reading further on this page's numbers
The methodology guide walks through exactly how Draper's 3.16 seasonal COP and the rest of this page's numbers get built. Draper's 19°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.