Should Ravenna switch to a heat pump?

Ravenna 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 $50 more a year to run than the furnace it replaces — a premium with no payback. That's Ravenna's own climate and rates talking, not a hedge or a caveat.

How cold Ravenna actually gets

Ravenna has a cold winter that leans hard on heating equipment — 5312 heating degree days a year against a 65°F base — and summers add a moderate cooling load, at 563 cooling degree days. The 99% winter design temperature here — the cold snap equipment must be sized for, not the seasonal average — is 7°F, against a record low of 1.4°F. That puts the seasonal coefficient of performance at 2.87 for the recommended cold-climate unit. Below the 25°F line where a standard machine starts leaning on resistance backup, Ravenna sits firmly in cold-climate territory, so that's the class of unit priced here. These numbers come from PORTAGE COUNTY AIRPORT, the closest NOAA station, 3.9 miles out.

What it actually costs to run, year to year

A 2000-square-foot house here would pull roughly 4,687 heating kilowatt-hours annually on top of cooling, totalling about $951 a year on electricity. The gas furnace it replaces burns roughly 55 Mcf a year at 13.85 per Mcf here, for a running cost near $900 a year (electricity here runs 18.40¢/kWh). Priced as a standalone purchase rather than against a like-for-like replacement, equipment payback runs past the 15-year equipment life, for a 15-year net position $4,253 behind.

The other scenario: no gas furnace to begin with

Plenty of homes in Ravenna heat with electricity alone, no gas line involved. Swap the comparison to resistance heat instead of gas, and Ravenna's answer improves. The saving here runs about $1,659 a year, which recovers the extra $8,000 spent going electric in roughly 4.8 years.

How Ravenna compares nationally

Ranked against the other 3206 cities covered, Ravenna comes in at 479 for heating severity — 1 would be the coldest place in the dataset — and 2936 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 Ravenna

Ravenna, Ohio is home to about 11,236 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 Ravenna, nothing is lost by holding off until the current equipment genuinely fails.

Get quotes from local HVAC contractors before deciding.

Where Ravenna's figure comes from

Every constant behind this page — the 2.87 seasonal COP, the degree-day corrections, the equipment costs — is documented in the methodology guide. Ravenna's 7°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.