Piqua, OH: the heat pump payback math
Piqua is a place where a heat pump genuinely costs more to operate than the alternative. 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. The heat pump would cost about $30 more a year to run than the furnace it replaces — a premium with no payback. There's no spin on that: Piqua's numbers say wait.
Why Piqua's climate drives this number
Degree days tell the story here: Piqua racks up 4586 heating degree days each year (base 65°F), and summers add a moderate cooling load, with 951 cooling degree days on the cooling side. Sizing runs off the design temperature, not the average day: 3.2°F here (record low -4°F), which works out to a seasonal COP of 2.78 for the cold-climate class of unit this climate calls for. A cold-climate unit is the right call in Piqua — 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, DARKE COUNTY AIRPORT, 15.7 miles from Piqua.
Piqua's running-cost comparison, in dollars
Electricity use for heating alone comes out to about 4,177 kWh a year on the 2000-square-foot reference house; folding in cooling puts the electric bill near $918 a year. Piqua's gas rate of 13.85 per Mcf, applied to the 48 Mcf a year the furnace burns, puts its running cost near $888 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 $3,943 behind.
The other scenario: no gas furnace to begin with
Gas isn't universal in Piqua — many houses run on electric heat already. Compared with baseboard or electric-furnace resistance heat, the numbers shift in the heat pump’s favor. The saving here runs about $1,446 a year, which recovers the extra $8,000 spent going electric in roughly 5.5 years.
Piqua against the rest of the country
Ranked against the other 3206 cities covered, Piqua comes in at 1109 for heating severity — 1 would be the coldest place in the dataset — and 1851 by population, where 1 is largest. That's the middle third for winter severity among the cities covered here.
Deciding what's next in Piqua, OH
About 20,940 people live in Piqua, Ohio, 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.
Ask a local HVAC contractor for a quote before committing either way.
Reading further on this page's numbers
The methodology guide walks through exactly how Piqua's 2.78 seasonal COP and the rest of this page's numbers get built. Piqua's 3.2°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.