Should Sandy switch to a heat pump?
Sandy sits right on the fence — how long you'll own the house decides this one. $3,500 is what Sandy 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. Sandy's residents would see roughly $244 a year back in running costs, putting the payback around 14.3 years. It's a genuine toss-up here — Sandy's numbers don't point clearly either way.
How cold Sandy actually gets
3827 heating degree days pile up here every year, so Sandy has a real but manageable winter; the cooling side runs to 635 cooling degree days, where summers add a moderate cooling load. 19°F is the figure equipment gets sized against here — the 99th-percentile cold snap, not an average day — with a record low of 14°F on file. Worked through the model, that's a seasonal COP of 3.16 on the cold-climate unit fit for this climate. Below the 25°F line where a standard machine starts leaning on resistance backup, Sandy sits firmly in cold-climate territory, so that's the class of unit priced here. Climate figures trace to the nearest NOAA station, PORTLAND-TROUTDALE AIRPORT, 12.6 miles from Sandy.
Sandy's running-cost comparison, in dollars
A 2000-square-foot house here would pull roughly 3,067 heating kilowatt-hours annually on top of cooling, totalling about $546 a year on electricity. The gas furnace it replaces burns roughly 40 Mcf a year at 16.71 per Mcf here, for a running cost near $791 a year (electricity here runs 15.14¢/kWh). Looked at as a full purchase rather than an incremental one, payback here is roughly 55.2 years, leaving the 15-year total $165 ahead.
The other scenario: no gas furnace to begin with
Not every home in Sandy has gas service. Swap the comparison to resistance heat instead of gas, and Sandy's answer improves. The saving here runs about $1,045 a year, which recovers the extra $8,000 spent going electric in roughly 7.7 years.
Where Sandy ranks in this dataset
Among 3206 cities, Sandy's winter puts it at rank 1635 for severity, while its size puts it at rank 2654 for population — 1 in both cases being the extreme. That's the middle third for winter severity among the cities covered here.
What to do with this number in Sandy
Sandy, Oregon is home to about 12,990 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 Sandy, nothing is lost by holding off until the current equipment genuinely fails.
Get quotes from local HVAC contractors before deciding.
More on how this number was built
Every constant behind this page — the 3.16 seasonal COP, the degree-day corrections, the equipment costs — is documented in the methodology guide. At a 19°F design temperature, Sandy sits in cold-climate territory; the guide to that class of unit explains why.