Should Dumont switch to a heat pump?

Here in Dumont, the honest answer is that a heat pump raises your annual running cost. 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). The heat pump would cost about $66 more a year to run than the furnace it replaces — a premium with no payback. There's no spin on that: Dumont's numbers say wait.

The climate behind Dumont's payback figure

Dumont has a real but manageable winter — 4363 heating degree days a year against a 65°F base — and summers are hot enough that cooling matters as much as heating, at 1248 cooling degree days. The 99% winter design temperature here — the cold snap equipment must be sized for, not the seasonal average — is 15.1°F, against a record low of 9°F. That puts the seasonal coefficient of performance at 3.06 for the recommended cold-climate unit. Dumont 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, TETERBORO AIRPORT, 7.5 miles from Dumont.

What it actually costs to run, year to year

Modelled on a typical 2000-square-foot house, the heat pump draws about 3,610 kWh a year to keep it warm, plus cooling, for a combined electric bill near $1,088 a year. Dumont's gas rate of 14.21 per Mcf, applied to the 45 Mcf a year the furnace burns, puts its running cost near $1,022 a year, against 23.28¢ per kWh for electricity. Priced as a standalone purchase rather than against a like-for-like replacement, equipment payback runs past the 15-year equipment life, for a 15-year net position $4,490 behind.

If your home heats with electric baseboard instead of gas

Plenty of homes in Dumont heat with electricity alone, no gas line involved. Swap the comparison to resistance heat instead of gas, and Dumont's answer improves. Switching saves about $1,860 a year here — a heat pump moving heat rather than generating it needs far less electricity than resistance coils — so the extra $8,000 spent up front comes back in about 4.3 years.

Dumont against the rest of the country

Among 3206 cities, Dumont's winter puts it at rank 1255 for severity, while its size puts it at rank 2043 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 Dumont, NJ

About 18,606 people live in Dumont, New Jersey, 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 Dumont's 3.06 seasonal COP and the rest of this page's numbers get built. At a 15.1°F design temperature, Dumont sits in cold-climate territory; the guide to that class of unit explains why.