Heat pump vs. gas furnace in Hempstead, NY

Here in Hempstead, the honest answer is that a heat pump raises your annual running cost. $3,500 is what Hempstead would pay extra to go electric rather than replace the furnace and AC with the same again, once the $2,000 federal credit is applied. Unfortunately the electric bill outweighs the gas bill it replaces by about $72 a year here, so the extra spend stays unrecovered. That's Hempstead's own climate and rates talking, not a hedge or a caveat.

How cold Hempstead actually gets

Degree days tell the story here: Hempstead racks up 4105 heating degree days each year (base 65°F), and summers are hot enough that cooling matters as much as heating, with 1134 cooling degree days on the cooling side. Sizing runs off the design temperature, not the average day: 18°F here (record low 12°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 Hempstead — below 25°F design temperature, a standard heat pump leans hard on electric-resistance backup, which erases most of the savings. Source: NOAA station JOHN F KENNEDY INTERNATIONAL, 8.8 miles from Hempstead — the closest one on record.

What it actually costs to run, year to year

Electricity use for heating alone comes out to about 3,321 kWh a year on the 2000-square-foot reference house; folding in cooling puts the electric bill near $1,253 a year. That compares with roughly 43 Mcf a year of gas at Hempstead's 17.58 per-Mcf rate — about $1,181 a year — against a local electricity rate of 29.22¢/kWh. 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 $4,578 behind.

The other scenario: no gas furnace to begin with

Plenty of homes in Hempstead heat with electricity alone, no gas line involved. Swap the comparison to resistance heat instead of gas, and Hempstead's answer improves. The saving here runs about $2,214 a year, which recovers the extra $8,000 spent going electric in roughly 3.6 years.

How Hempstead compares nationally

Among 3206 cities, Hempstead's winter puts it at rank 1451 for severity, while its size puts it at rank 677 for population — 1 in both cases being the extreme. That's the middle third for winter severity among the cities covered here.

Next step for 59,569 people in Hempstead

Hempstead, New York is home to about 59,569 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 Hempstead, nothing is lost by holding off until the current equipment genuinely fails.

Line up a few local HVAC quotes before you decide.

Reading further on this page's numbers

Every constant behind this page — the 3.13 seasonal COP, the degree-day corrections, the equipment costs — is documented in the methodology guide. Hempstead's 18°F design temperature falls on the cold side of the 25°F cutoff the cold-climate unit guide walks through.