Sandusky, OH: the heat pump payback math

Here in Sandusky, the honest answer is that a heat pump raises your annual running cost. Against a like-for-like gas furnace and AC swap, going electric costs $3,500 more up front here (already netting out a $2,000 tax credit). Unfortunately the electric bill outweighs the gas bill it replaces by about $2 a year here, so the extra spend stays unrecovered. There's no spin on that: Sandusky's numbers say wait.

Why Sandusky's climate drives this number

3839 heating degree days pile up here every year, so Sandusky has a real but manageable winter; the cooling side runs to 1071 cooling degree days, where summers are hot enough that cooling matters as much as heating. Sizing runs off the design temperature, not the average day: 3.2°F here (record low -0.4°F), which works out to a seasonal COP of 2.78 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, Sandusky sits firmly in cold-climate territory, so that's the class of unit priced here. Source: NOAA station CARL R KELLER FIELD AIRPORT, 9 miles from Sandusky — the closest one on record.

The month-to-month numbers for Sandusky

Modelled on a typical 2000-square-foot house, the heat pump draws about 3,497 kWh a year to keep it warm, plus cooling, for a combined electric bill near $811 a year. Sandusky's gas rate of 13.85 per Mcf, applied to the 40 Mcf a year the furnace burns, puts its running cost near $809 a year, against 18.40¢ per kWh for electricity. 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 $3,534 behind.

If your home heats with electric baseboard instead of gas

Gas isn't universal in Sandusky — many houses run on electric heat already. Compared with baseboard or electric-furnace resistance heat, the numbers shift in the heat pump’s favor. Switching saves about $1,233 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 6.5 years.

How Sandusky compares nationally

Sandusky lands at position 1616 out of 3206 cities on heating severity (coldest is 1), and 1655 out of 3206 by population size (biggest is 1). That's the middle third for winter severity among the cities covered here.

Deciding what's next in Sandusky, OH

About 24,174 people live in Sandusky, 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

Every constant behind this page — the 2.78 seasonal COP, the degree-day corrections, the equipment costs — is documented in the methodology guide. Sandusky'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.