Should La Verne switch to a heat pump?
La Verne clears a genuine payback here, inside a reasonable stretch of years. Against a like-for-like gas furnace and AC swap, going electric costs $1,000 more up front here (already netting out a $2,000 tax credit). La Verne's residents would see roughly $251 a year back in running costs, putting the payback around 4 years. The window here is reasonable, and it's specific to what La Verne actually pays for power and gas.
La Verne's weather, in the numbers that matter
La Verne barely has a winter to speak of — 1219 heating degree days a year against a 65°F base — and summers are hot enough that cooling matters as much as heating, at 1906 cooling degree days. Sizing runs off the design temperature, not the average day: 37.4°F here (record low 35.6°F), which works out to a seasonal COP of 3.31 for the standard class of unit this climate calls for. La Verne's winters don't get cold enough to need the cold-climate premium — a standard unit holds up fine. Source: NOAA station BRACKETT FIELD AIRPORT, 1.6 miles from La Verne — the closest one on record.
La Verne's running-cost comparison, in dollars
Electricity use for heating alone comes out to about 933 kWh a year on the 2000-square-foot reference house; folding in cooling puts the electric bill near $840 a year. The gas furnace it replaces burns roughly 13 Mcf a year at 22.01 per Mcf here, for a running cost near $1,090 a year (electricity here runs 32.83¢/kWh). Buy it outright, not incrementally, and payback stretches to 43.9 years; over 15 years the net position sits $2,761 ahead.
The other scenario: no gas furnace to begin with
Plenty of homes in La Verne heat with electricity alone, no gas line involved. Against electric-resistance heat — baseboard or an electric furnace, both 100% efficient but still just resistance — the case for switching gets stronger here. The saving here runs about $985 a year, which recovers the extra $5,500 spent going electric in roughly 5.6 years.
How La Verne compares nationally
La Verne lands at position 2793 out of 3206 cities on heating severity (coldest is 1), and 1350 out of 3206 by population size (biggest is 1). That's the mildest third of cities covered, where utility rates carry more of the answer than climate does.
What to do with this number in La Verne
La Verne, California is home to about 30,192 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. Given the math above, La Verne is a place worth lining up quotes ahead of a breakdown, not waiting for one.
Get quotes from local HVAC contractors before deciding.
Reading further on this page's numbers
The methodology guide walks through exactly how La Verne's 3.31 seasonal COP and the rest of this page's numbers get built. The $2,000 federal credit baked into La Verne's number is explained, with the before-and-after math, in the tax credit guide.