Heat pump vs. gas furnace in Durham, NC

This one's marginal in Durham: it only clears if you stay long enough. 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). Lower bills claw that back: about $258 saved annually, for a payback of roughly 13.6 years. It's a genuine toss-up here — Durham's numbers don't point clearly either way.

Durham's weather, in the numbers that matter

Degree days tell the story here: Durham racks up 2409 heating degree days each year (base 65°F), and summers are hot enough that cooling matters as much as heating, with 2068 cooling degree days on the cooling side. Sizing runs off the design temperature, not the average day: 18°F here (record low 18°F), which works out to a seasonal COP of 3.13 for the cold-climate class of unit this climate calls for. A cold-climate unit is the right call in Durham — below 25°F design temperature, a standard heat pump leans hard on electric-resistance backup, which erases most of the savings. These numbers come from RALEIGH-DURHAM INTERNATIONAL, the closest NOAA station, 8.8 miles out.

What it actually costs to run, year to year

Electricity use for heating alone comes out to about 1,949 kWh a year on the 2000-square-foot reference house; folding in cooling puts the electric bill near $554 a year. The gas furnace it replaces burns roughly 25 Mcf a year at 16.42 per Mcf here, for a running cost near $812 a year (electricity here runs 14.93¢/kWh). Looked at as a full purchase rather than an incremental one, payback here is roughly 52.3 years, leaving the 15-year total $368 ahead.

The other scenario: no gas furnace to begin with

Plenty of homes in Durham heat with electricity alone, no gas line involved. Swap the comparison to resistance heat instead of gas, and Durham's answer improves. The saving here runs about $757 a year, which recovers the extra $8,000 spent going electric in roughly 10.6 years.

Where Durham ranks in this dataset

Ranked against the other 3206 cities covered, Durham comes in at 2232 for heating severity — 1 would be the coldest place in the dataset — and 71 by population, where 1 is largest. That's the mildest third of cities covered, where utility rates carry more of the answer than climate does.

What to do with this number in Durham

Durham, North Carolina is home to about 301,870 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 Durham, 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. At a 18°F design temperature, Durham sits in cold-climate territory; the guide to that class of unit explains why.