Heat pump vs. gas furnace in Fishers, IN

Fishers is a place where a heat pump genuinely costs more to operate than the alternative. Swap a failed furnace and AC for a heat pump rather than buying like-for-like, and the extra cost here runs $3,500 after a $2,000 federal tax credit. The heat pump would cost about $180 more a year to run than the furnace it replaces — a premium with no payback. There's no spin on that: Fishers's numbers say wait.

The climate behind Fishers's payback figure

Fishers has a real but manageable winter — 4894 heating degree days a year against a 65°F base — and summers add a moderate cooling load, at 779 cooling degree days. Sizing runs off the design temperature, not the average day: -5.8°F here (record low -7.8°F), which works out to a seasonal COP of 2.56 for the cold-climate class of unit this climate calls for. Below the 25°F line where a standard machine starts leaning on resistance backup, Fishers sits firmly in cold-climate territory, so that's the class of unit priced here. These numbers come from INDIANAPOLIS EXECUTIVE AIRPOR, the closest NOAA station, 15.7 miles out.

What it actually costs to run, year to year

A 2000-square-foot house here would pull roughly 4,841 heating kilowatt-hours annually on top of cooling, totalling about $937 a year on electricity. Fishers's gas rate of 11.49 per Mcf, applied to the 51 Mcf a year the furnace burns, puts its running cost near $758 a year, against 17.03¢ per kWh for electricity. Looked at as a full purchase rather than an incremental one, payback here is longer than the 15-year equipment life, leaving the 15-year total $6,199 behind.

The other scenario: no gas furnace to begin with

Gas isn't universal in Fishers — many houses run on electric heat already. Swap the comparison to resistance heat instead of gas, and Fishers's answer improves. The saving here runs about $1,345 a year, which recovers the extra $8,000 spent going electric in roughly 5.9 years.

How Fishers compares nationally

Ranked against the other 3206 cities covered, Fishers comes in at 862 for heating severity — 1 would be the coldest place in the dataset — and 316 by population, where 1 is largest. That's the coldest third of the dataset, where climate does most of the work behind this figure.

Next step for 103,986 people in Fishers

About 103,986 people live in Fishers, Indiana, 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

Every constant behind this page — the 2.56 seasonal COP, the degree-day corrections, the equipment costs — is documented in the methodology guide. Fishers's -5.8°F design temperature falls on the cold side of the 25°F cutoff the cold-climate unit guide walks through.