Will a heat pump pay off in Lafayette, CO?
In Lafayette, a heat pump would cost more to run each year than what you have now. $3,500 is what Lafayette 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. 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: Lafayette's numbers say wait.
Why Lafayette's climate drives this number
Degree days tell the story here: Lafayette 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 (record low -20.6°F), which works out to a seasonal COP of 2.57 for the cold-climate class of unit this climate calls for. A cold-climate unit is the right call in Lafayette — below 25°F design temperature, a standard heat pump leans hard on electric-resistance backup, which erases most of the savings. Climate figures trace to the nearest NOAA station, ERIE MUNICIPAL AIRPORT, 3 miles from Lafayette.
What it actually costs to run, year to year
Modelled on a typical 2000-square-foot house, the heat pump draws about 5,447 kWh a year to keep it warm, plus cooling, for a combined electric bill near $1,020 a year. The gas furnace it replaces burns roughly 58 Mcf a year at 11.17 per Mcf here, for a running cost near $826 a year (electricity here runs 16.53¢/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 $6,422 behind.
If your home heats with electric baseboard instead of gas
Gas isn't universal in Lafayette — many houses run on electric heat already. Swap the comparison to resistance heat instead of gas, and Lafayette's answer improves. The saving here runs about $1,476 a year, which recovers the extra $8,000 spent going electric in roughly 5.4 years.
Lafayette against the rest of the country
Ranked against the other 3206 cities covered, Lafayette comes in at 353 for heating severity — 1 would be the coldest place in the dataset — and 1333 by population, where 1 is largest. That's the coldest third of the dataset, where climate does most of the work behind this figure.
What to do with this number in Lafayette
About 30,587 people live in Lafayette, 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.
Get quotes from local HVAC contractors before deciding.
Reading further on this page's numbers
Nothing above is a black box: the methodology guide shows the full arithmetic behind Lafayette's 2.57 seasonal COP and payback figure. At a -5.4°F design temperature, Lafayette sits in cold-climate territory; the guide to that class of unit explains why.