Heat Pump Payback in Firestone, CO
Will a heat pump pay off in Firestone, CO?
Firestone is a place where a heat pump genuinely costs more to operate than the alternative. $5,500 is what Firestone would pay extra to go electric rather than replace the furnace and AC with the same again. Running costs here land $195 a year higher than the furnace it replaces, so that premium is never recovered. There's no spin on that: Firestone's numbers say wait.
Compare against another city
This runs the same numbers for 3206 US cities, not just Firestone. Look one up here.
The climate behind Firestone's payback figure
Degree days tell the story here: Firestone racks up 5528 heating degree days each year (base 65°F), and summers add a moderate cooling load, with 852 cooling degree days on the cooling side. Sizing runs off the design temperature, not the average day: -5.4°F here (coldest 2024 reading -20.6°F), which works out to a seasonal COP of 2.57 for the cold-climate class of unit this climate calls for. Firestone 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. Source: NOAA station Erie Municipal Airport, 11 miles from Firestone, the closest one on record.
Firestone's running-cost comparison, in dollars
A 2000-square-foot house here would pull roughly 5,447 heating kilowatt-hours annually on top of cooling, totalling about $1,020 a year on electricity. That compares with roughly 58 Mcf a year of gas at Firestone's $11.17 per-Mcf rate, about $826 a year with the old AC included, against a local electricity rate of 16.53¢/kWh. With running costs higher every year, there is no payback at any purchase price; over 15 years, against a like-for-like replacement, a household here would end $8,422 behind.
What would change Firestone's answer
The heat pump would become the cheaper option in Firestone if electricity fell to 12.7¢/kWh (from 16.53¢) or gas rose above $14.55 per Mcf (from $11.17). At today's prices a cheaper quote cannot rescue the gas comparison in Firestone, since there is no yearly saving to recover it from.
Electric resistance heat in Firestone, compared
Gas isn't universal in Firestone, many houses run on electric heat already. Against electric-resistance heat, baseboard or an electric furnace, both 100% efficient but still just resistance, the case for switching gets stronger here. About $1,476 a year comes back this way, enough that the 6.8-year payback clears the $10,000 premium comfortably within the equipment's life.
Firestone against the rest of the country
Ranked against the other 3206 cities covered, Firestone comes in at 354 for heating severity, 1 would be the coldest place in the dataset, and 1979 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 Firestone, CO
About 19,396 people live in Firestone, Colorado, 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.
Line up a few local HVAC quotes before you decide.
Reading further on this page's numbers
The methodology guide walks through exactly how Firestone's 2.57 seasonal COP and the rest of this page's numbers get built. Firestone's -5.4°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.