Should North Augusta switch to a heat pump?

This one's marginal in North Augusta: 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. North Augusta's residents would see roughly $263 a year back in running costs, putting the payback around 13.3 years. It's a genuine toss-up here — North Augusta's numbers don't point clearly either way.

North Augusta's weather, in the numbers that matter

1770 heating degree days pile up here every year, so North Augusta has a mild winter by US standards; the cooling side runs to 2478 cooling degree days, where summers are hot enough that cooling matters as much as heating. The 99% winter design temperature here — the cold snap equipment must be sized for, not the seasonal average — is 21°F, against a record low of 19°F. That puts the seasonal coefficient of performance at 3.2 for the recommended cold-climate unit. Below the 25°F line where a standard machine starts leaning on resistance backup, North Augusta sits firmly in cold-climate territory, so that's the class of unit priced here. These numbers come from DANIEL FIELD AIRPORT, the closest NOAA station, 6.1 miles out.

The month-to-month numbers for North Augusta

Modelled on a typical 2000-square-foot house, the heat pump draws about 1,401 kWh a year to keep it warm, plus cooling, for a combined electric bill near $568 a year. The gas furnace it replaces burns roughly 18 Mcf a year at 16.91 per Mcf here, for a running cost near $831 a year (electricity here runs 16.16¢/kWh). Looked at as a full purchase rather than an incremental one, payback here is roughly 51.3 years, leaving the 15-year total $444 ahead.

If your home heats with electric baseboard instead of gas

Not every home in North Augusta has gas service. Swap the comparison to resistance heat instead of gas, and North Augusta's answer improves. About $675 a year comes back this way, enough that the 11.8-year payback clears the $8,000 premium comfortably within the equipment's life.

North Augusta against the rest of the country

Ranked against the other 3206 cities covered, North Augusta comes in at 2551 for heating severity — 1 would be the coldest place in the dataset — and 1516 by population, where 1 is largest. That's the mildest third of cities covered, where utility rates carry more of the answer than climate does.

Deciding what's next in North Augusta, SC

North Augusta, South Carolina is home to about 26,395 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 North Augusta, nothing is lost by holding off until the current equipment genuinely fails.

Get quotes from local HVAC contractors before deciding.

Reading further on this page's numbers

Every constant behind this page — the 3.2 seasonal COP, the degree-day corrections, the equipment costs — is documented in the methodology guide. North Augusta's 21°F design temperature falls on the cold side of the 25°F cutoff the cold-climate unit guide walks through.