Heat pump vs. gas furnace in Easthampton, MA
Easthampton technically pencils out, but only past the point the equipment would need replacing anyway. 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). Easthampton's residents would see roughly $24 a year back in running costs, putting the payback around 148.5 years. That's a technicality, not a recommendation, for anyone actually living in Easthampton.
How cold Easthampton actually gets
5447 heating degree days pile up here every year, so Easthampton has a cold winter that leans hard on heating equipment; the cooling side runs to 772 cooling degree days, where summers add a moderate cooling load. Sizing runs off the design temperature, not the average day: 3°F here (record low -2.9°F), which works out to a seasonal COP of 2.77 for the cold-climate class of unit this climate calls for. A cold-climate unit is the right call in Easthampton — below 25°F design temperature, a standard heat pump leans hard on electric-resistance backup, which erases most of the savings. Source: NOAA station BARNES MUNICIPAL AIRPORT, 7.8 miles from Easthampton — the closest one on record.
What it actually costs to run, year to year
A 2000-square-foot house here would pull roughly 4,979 heating kilowatt-hours annually on top of cooling, totalling about $1,700 a year on electricity. The gas furnace it replaces burns roughly 57 Mcf a year at 25.06 per Mcf here, for a running cost near $1,723 a year (electricity here runs 30.15¢/kWh). Looked at as a full purchase rather than an incremental one, payback here is roughly 572.7 years, leaving the 15-year total $3,146 behind.
The other scenario: no gas furnace to begin with
Gas isn't universal in Easthampton — many houses run on electric heat already. Compared with baseboard or electric-furnace resistance heat, the numbers shift in the heat pump’s favor. Switching saves about $2,760 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 2.9 years.
Easthampton against the rest of the country
Easthampton lands at position 412 out of 3206 cities on heating severity (coldest is 1), and 2295 out of 3206 by population size (biggest is 1). That's the coldest third of the dataset, where climate does most of the work behind this figure.
Next step for 16,020 people in Easthampton
Easthampton, Massachusetts is home to about 16,020 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 Easthampton, nothing is lost by holding off until the current equipment genuinely fails.
Get quotes from local HVAC contractors before deciding.
More on how this number was built
Every constant behind this page — the 2.77 seasonal COP, the degree-day corrections, the equipment costs — is documented in the methodology guide. Easthampton's 3°F design temperature falls on the cold side of the 25°F cutoff the cold-climate unit guide walks through.