Is a heat pump worth it in Lima?

Here in Lima, the honest answer is that a heat pump raises your annual running cost. $3,500 is what Lima 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. The heat pump would cost about $32 more a year to run than the furnace it replaces — a premium with no payback. That's Lima's own climate and rates talking, not a hedge or a caveat.

How cold Lima actually gets

Lima has a real but manageable winter — 4649 heating degree days a year against a 65°F base — and summers are hot enough that cooling matters as much as heating, at 1046 cooling degree days. Sizing runs off the design temperature, not the average day: 1.9°F here (record low -2.9°F), which works out to a seasonal COP of 2.75 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, Lima sits firmly in cold-climate territory, so that's the class of unit priced here. These numbers come from LIMA ALLEN COUNTY AIRPORT, the closest NOAA station, 5 miles out.

The month-to-month numbers for Lima

Modelled on a typical 2000-square-foot house, the heat pump draws about 4,281 kWh a year to keep it warm, plus cooling, for a combined electric bill near $952 a year. Lima's gas rate of 13.85 per Mcf, applied to the 48 Mcf a year the furnace burns, puts its running cost near $920 a year, against 18.40¢ per kWh for electricity. Buy it outright, not incrementally, and payback stretches to beyond the 15-year equipment life; over 15 years the net position sits $3,976 behind.

The other scenario: no gas furnace to begin with

Not every home in Lima has gas service. Swap the comparison to resistance heat instead of gas, and Lima's answer improves. Switching saves about $1,464 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 5.5 years.

Where Lima ranks in this dataset

Lima lands at position 1043 out of 3206 cities on heating severity (coldest is 1), and 1184 out of 3206 by population size (biggest is 1). 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 Lima

Lima, Ohio is home to about 34,690 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 Lima, 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 2.75 seasonal COP, the degree-day corrections, the equipment costs — is documented in the methodology guide. Lima's 1.9°F design temperature is below the 25°F line, which is why a cold-climate unit is the right call here — see what that changes in the cold-climate unit guide.