Pennsylvania Heating

Heat pump vs furnace in Butler County, Pennsylvania

Price Both Options

Install quotes in Butler County

Which costs less to run in Butler County?

An outdoor air conditioning condenser unit on a concrete pad beside a dark blue horizontal lap siding wall at night, with a wall-mounted disconnect box and flexible conduit.

Heat pump

To heat your home here$2.37per 100,000 Btu

A beige residential gas furnace with metal ductwork and PVC vent pipes stands on a concrete basement floor beside a blue-painted wall and a support column.

Furnace

To heat your home here$1.64per 100,000 Btu

At Pennsylvania's gas and electricity prices, a gas furnace makes the same heat as a heat pump for at least 30% less.

Btu stands for British thermal unit, the standard measure of heat energy.

Where does a heat pump shine?

  • Heats and cools in one system

    A heat pump runs the same way all year. It pulls heat into the house in winter and pushes it out in summer.

    Living room with a light blue sofa holding patterned cushions and a grey fringed throw, a wooden coffee table with a vase of white and green flowers, a mug and a bowl of pebbles, blue built-in shelving with books beside a wood-burning stove, and a white-framed window looking onto a garden.

  • Steady, even comfort

    Instead of short bursts of heat, it keeps a gentle, steady output going. The house stays at one comfortable temperature.

    A living room at dusk with a lit wood stove in a dark fireplace surround, a navy armchair with a blue throw and open book, a window seat with cushions, a lit floor lamp, and a tan dog sleeping on a cream shag rug.

  • No gas line, nothing burning in the house

    It moves heat instead of making it from fire. That means no combustion, no flue and no gas bill for heat.

    A kitchen with navy blue cabinets, white subway tile backsplash and a light countertop island holding a pale blue stovetop kettle on a black induction cooktop, with a potted plant, salt and pepper mills on a tray, and a window with a blue shade in the background.

Where does a furnace shine?

  • Runs on the gas most homes here already use

    Most homes in Butler County already have gas line run to them, 68% heat with it now. If yours is one of them, a gas furnace just hooks into what's already there.

    A row of attached brick houses with front porches, blue-painted wooden steps and railings, and exterior gas meters, beside a snow-covered sidewalk strip with scattered dry leaves.

  • Fast, strong heat on demand

    A furnace pushes out hot air within minutes of switching on. A cold house warms up fast.

    A mudroom with a navy door with a window showing snow outside, snow-dusted fur-lined boots on a stone tile floor, a patterned rug, and a light blue bench with wood top holding a steaming mug and woven storage baskets, with coats hanging above.

  • Proven, simple, easy to get serviced

    Gas furnaces have heated homes for generations. Almost every HVAC tech knows them inside and out.

    A gloved hand holds a square pleated air filter in front of a gray furnace in a basement, beside a wooden shelf with storage bins and a potted plant.

What winter here does to a heat pump

Your furnace or heat pump has to work from October through May here, eight months, longer than it runs in most places. The overnight low averages 21°F across December, January and February, and that number matters more than the average winter temperature most pages quote, because it tells you what the machine faces at night, every night, for three months straight.

A standard heat pump starts losing ground before it gets that cold. Below 40°F it puts out less heat than its rating says, and below about 35°F it typically needs backup heat to make up the difference. Both marks sit above the 21°F average low here, and every one of the roughly 135 nights a year that drop to freezing or below is colder than both. That is not an occasional cold snap. That is most of the winter.

Only about 5 nights a year reach 0°F here, so the deep cold is rare. The near-freezing cold is not. A heat pump sized and built to the federal minimum will be leaning on backup heat for a large part of the season, not just a few nights in January.

There is a real answer to this, and it is not to avoid heat pumps here. Cold climate heat pumps are built and tested for exactly this problem. To earn the ENERGY STAR Cold Climate label, a heat pump has to keep at least 70 percent of its rated heating capacity at 5°F and still produce 1.75 units of heat for every unit of electricity it uses at that temperature. In field testing of prototype cold climate heat pumps through two winters in occupied homes, backup heat covered only a small share of the heat needed between 0°F and 35°F, and the units ran on backup heat alone only rarely, even above 0°F. A furnace never has this problem, because it does not rely on outdoor air to make heat.

A dark blue entry door with a frosted glass panel in a blue shingled house with white trim, with snow on the roof and steps, a stacked woodpile at left, and a stone wall at right.

What each one costs to run and what's already in the house

At Pennsylvania's average fuel prices, a gas furnace makes the same heat for at least 30 percent less than a standard heat pump, $1.64 against $2.37 per 100,000 Btu. That gap is built on each machine's federal minimum rating, and the heat pump side of it doesn't include backup heat, which a standard heat pump here will be using often given how many nights sit below 35°F. A cold climate model narrows the gap by needing backup less, but it still runs on electricity, and electricity here costs $52.07 per million Btu against $13.12 for gas.

What's already run to the house matters too. Utility gas heats 68 percent of homes in Butler County, about two in three, while electricity heats 18.6 percent. If your house already has a gas line and a furnace, switching to a heat pump means adding the electrical capacity a heat pump needs, on top of whatever the equipment costs. If your home is one of the fifth already heating with electricity, that work may already be done.

A furnace only heats. For the other four months of the year, June through August, it has nothing to do, and your home's cooling has to come from a separate air conditioner. A heat pump does both jobs with one system, heating for the eight months the season runs here and cooling for the three it doesn't, which is worth something if you are also replacing an aging air conditioner and would rather not maintain two machines.

So the choice here comes down to what you're solving for. If keeping winter running cost as low as possible is the priority, and gas is already at the house, a furnace does that at a real, known gas price. If you want one system for heat and cooling and are willing to pay more per Btu for it, a cold climate heat pump will get your house through the winter here, backup heat and all, but check what it would take to bring enough electrical capacity to the house before deciding.

Sources: NOAA nClimDiv · NOAA 1991–2020 seasonal normals · Census ACS 2020–2024 · EIA SEDS 2024 · PNNL Building America guide · PNNL-37127 field study · ENERGY STAR product criteria · 10 CFR 430.32

A two-story navy blue clapboard house with white trim, a snow-covered roof and brick chimney, flanked by bare trees and small evergreen shrubs, with deep snow covering the front yard and a cleared path to the front steps.

Common questions about heat pumps and furnaces

  • Can a heat pump heat a house through a Pennsylvania winter?

    Yes, but a standard heat pump struggles on the coldest nights here. Below 40°F its heat output falls short of its rating, and below about 35°F it often needs backup heat, and the average overnight low here in December through February is 21°F. A cold-climate model holds up better, built to keep most of its capacity down to 5°F, but it's a different machine than the standard kind.

  • Do I need backup heat with a heat pump here?

    Most homeowners here pair one in. The average winter low is 21°F, and a standard heat pump's output falls short of its rating below 40°F and often needs backup below about 35°F, so on a lot of winter nights here it's working below both marks. A cold-climate heat pump needs less of it, since field tests found backup heat covered only a small share of the heat between 0°F and 35°F, but Butler County still sees about 5 nights a year at 0°F or below.

  • Can I keep my furnace and add a heat pump?

    Yes, and in Butler County it's a common setup. The furnace handles the cold nights, since about 135 nights a year here drop to freezing or below, and the heat pump takes over in milder weather and does your cooling all summer. Pairing them this way means neither machine has to cover the whole range on its own.

  • Is a heat pump cheaper to run than a furnace in Butler County?

    No, a furnace runs cheaper here. A gas furnace makes the same heat for about $1.64 per 100,000 Btu against $2.37 for a heat pump, because Pennsylvania's natural gas price per Btu is well below its electricity price. That gap holds across the whole 8 months heat runs here, not just the cold nights.

A man in a navy shirt, jeans and cap works with gloved hands on vent piping above a furnace in a basement utility area, with sheet-metal ductwork overhead, a blue door and shelving at left, and a tool bag on the floor.

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