Heat pump vs. gas furnace in Hampton, VA
This one's marginal in Hampton: it only clears if you stay long enough. 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. Lower bills claw that back: about $255 saved annually, for a payback of roughly 13.7 years. It's a genuine toss-up here — Hampton's numbers don't point clearly either way.
Hampton's weather, in the numbers that matter
2777 heating degree days pile up here every year, so Hampton has a mild winter by US standards; the cooling side runs to 1877 cooling degree days, where summers are hot enough that cooling matters as much as heating. 19.2°F is the figure equipment gets sized against here — the 99th-percentile cold snap, not an average day — with a record low of 18°F on file. Worked through the model, that's a seasonal COP of 3.16 on the cold-climate unit fit for this climate. Below the 25°F line where a standard machine starts leaning on resistance backup, Hampton sits firmly in cold-climate territory, so that's the class of unit priced here. Climate figures trace to the nearest NOAA station, LANGLEY AFB AIRPORT, 4.2 miles from Hampton.
Hampton's running-cost comparison, in dollars
Modelled on a typical 2000-square-foot house, the heat pump draws about 2,225 kWh a year to keep it warm, plus cooling, for a combined electric bill near $634 a year. Hampton's gas rate of 16.79 per Mcf, applied to the 29 Mcf a year the furnace burns, puts its running cost near $889 a year, against 16.58¢ per kWh for electricity. Buy it outright, not incrementally, and payback stretches to 53 years; over 15 years the net position sits $319 ahead.
The other scenario: no gas furnace to begin with
Plenty of homes in Hampton heat with electricity alone, no gas line involved. Compared with baseboard or electric-furnace resistance heat, the numbers shift in the heat pump’s favor. Switching saves about $935 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 8.6 years.
How Hampton compares nationally
Ranked against the other 3206 cities covered, Hampton comes in at 2013 for heating severity — 1 would be the coldest place in the dataset — and 210 by population, where 1 is largest. That's the middle third for winter severity among the cities covered here.
Deciding what's next in Hampton, VA
Hampton, Virginia is home to about 137,596 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 Hampton, nothing is lost by holding off until the current equipment genuinely fails.
Get quotes from local HVAC contractors before deciding.
Where Hampton's figure comes from
The methodology guide walks through exactly how Hampton's 3.16 seasonal COP and the rest of this page's numbers get built. Hampton's 19.2°F design temperature falls on the cold side of the 25°F cutoff the cold-climate unit guide walks through.