Pennsylvania Heating

Heat pump vs furnace in Wayne County, Pennsylvania

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For homes in Wayne County

Which costs less to run in Wayne County?

An outdoor air conditioning condenser unit on a concrete pad beside a dark blue horizontal lap-sided wall at night, with a small electrical disconnect box and conduit on the wall above it and mulch surrounding the pad.

Heat pump

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

A light gray gas furnace with louvered access panels stands on a concrete basement floor beside a dark blue painted block wall, with galvanized metal flue pipes and ductwork rising above it and copper and PVC piping along its right side.

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

    One machine handles the heat in winter and the cooling in summer. There's no second system to buy or keep up.

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  • Steady, even comfort

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

    A dimly lit living room with a navy armchair holding an open book, a lit table lamp, a window with blue curtains, potted plants, a storage console with wicker baskets, and a light-colored dog sleeping on a patterned rug.

  • No gas line, nothing burning in the house

    A heat pump runs on electricity alone. Nothing burns inside the house.

    A kitchen with navy blue cabinets and a white stone-topped island holding a black induction cooktop, a light blue kettle, a mug on a wooden board, and white tulips in a pitcher, with cream upper cabinets, two glass pendant lights, and a window above the sink.

Where does a furnace shine?

  • Strong, steady heat in hard cold

    Winter nights here average 17°F, and a furnace puts out hot air from the start, no matter how cold it gets outside. You get the same steady heat on the coldest night of January as you do in a mild stretch.

    A two-story dark-sided house with a white porch and lit windows at dusk, with a snow-covered yard, a snow-laden spruce, a glowing lamp post, and a shoveled walkway leading to the front steps.

  • Pairs with any central AC

    Most central air systems are built around a furnace. The two share the blower, the ducts and the thermostat.

    A metal floor vent set into hardwood flooring beside a window with sheer white curtains, with sunlight and leaf shadows on the floor and a blue-and-cream patterned rug at right.

  • Fast, strong heat on demand

    Turn the heat up and the furnace answers right away. There's no long wait for the house to catch up.

    A mudroom entry with snow-covered boots on a tiled floor, a floor vent, a wooden bench with a blue plaid throw and steaming mug, a sheer curtain, a dark blue door, and a snowy conifer landscape outside the window.

What the cold actually does here

Winters in Wayne County run long. The heat is on nine months a year, September through May, and the overnight low averages 17°F in December, January and February. That's the number that matters more than the cost chart above, because a heat pump's efficiency isn't fixed. It drops as the temperature drops.

A standard heat pump starts putting out less than its rated heat once it's below 40°F outside. Below about 35°F it often needs backup heat to make up the difference. Here, the average winter night is 17°F, below both marks. And it's not a few bad nights a year. About 160 nights a year in Wayne County fall at or below freezing, more than half of all the nights the heat is running. On every one of those nights, a standard heat pump is working below both the 40°F and 35°F marks.

That doesn't mean a heat pump can't heat your house. It means the running cost printed above, $2.37 per 100,000 Btu, is the best case. It's figured off the heat pump's seasonal rating with nothing added for backup heat, and backup heat here is electric resistance, the most expensive way to make heat there is. The colder your street gets, the more that $2.37 understates what you'd actually pay.

There's a real difference between a standard heat pump and a cold climate one here. A unit certified ENERGY STAR Cold Climate has to prove, under third party testing, that it still makes at least 1.75 units of heat per unit of electricity at 5°F, and keeps at least 70 percent of its 47°F capacity at that temperature. A field test of prototype cold climate heat pumps in occupied homes found backup heat covered only a small share of the heat needed between 0°F and 35°F, and the units almost never ran on backup alone unless it was below 0°F. Wayne County sees that only about 9 nights a year. For a county this cold, the difference between a standard heat pump and a cold climate one isn't a feature, it's the difference between a machine that struggles on an ordinary January night and one built for it.

A blue clapboard house with two dormers, a brick chimney, black shutters and a white picket fence, with snow on the roof and piled along the road in front.

What it costs to run, and what heats this county now

Set the cold aside and look at the fuel bill. At Pennsylvania's prices, a gas furnace makes 100,000 Btu of heat for $1.64. A heat pump, at its best case, makes the same heat for $2.37. An oil furnace runs $3.03, the most expensive of the three. If the only question were cost per Btu, the order is settled: gas furnace first, heat pump second, oil furnace last.

But that order only matters to a house that can act on it, and in Wayne County, gas is the fuel fewest homes have. Utility gas heats about one in ten homes here, 9.2 percent, against 51.3 percent of homes statewide. That $1.64 figure is real, but it's not available to most houses in this county the way it would be in a gas-heavy suburb near Philadelphia.

What actually heats Wayne County is oil and electricity. Fuel oil heats about one in three homes here, 31.6 percent, well above the statewide 14 percent. Electricity heats about one in four, 26.6 percent. Propane heats close to one in five, 18.4 percent. So the comparison that matters to most homeowners here isn't heat pump against furnace in the abstract, it's heat pump against whatever is already running in the basement. Against an oil furnace, the heat pump wins on running cost, $2.37 against $3.03. Against a gas furnace, if your house is one of the few with a gas line, the furnace wins, $1.64 against $2.37.

A furnace, gas or oil, only does one job. It has nothing to do with your house for the three months a year the heat is off. A heat pump heats and cools from the same system, which matters less here than it would somewhere with a longer cooling season. Wayne County runs cooling about two months, July and August, against nine months of heat. The case for a heat pump in this county rests on the cold months it has to get through, not the two it would save you from buying a separate air conditioner for.

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

A two-story dark blue clapboard house with white trim, a brick chimney and snow-covered roof, behind a stone retaining wall and snow-covered yard with bare trees.

Common questions about heat pumps and furnaces

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

    Yes, but a standard heat pump needs help on the coldest nights. Below 40°F its heat output falls short of its rated capacity, and below about 35°F it often switches on backup heat. The average overnight low here runs 17°F across December through February, well past both marks, though only about 9 nights a year drop to 0°F or below. A heat pump built to the ENERGY STAR Cold Climate spec is tested to hold at least 70 percent of its rated heat at 5°F, which covers the kind of cold Wayne County actually sees most nights.

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

    With a standard heat pump, yes, since its output drops below 40°F and it often needs backup below about 35°F, and the overnight low here averages 17°F in winter. A cold-climate heat pump needs less of it. Field tests of cold-climate models in occupied homes found backup heat supplied only a small share of the total heat down to 0°F, and the furnace rarely ran alone above that.

  • What if my house doesn't have a gas line?

    Then the real choice is between a heat pump and a furnace burning oil or propane, since electric resistance heat costs far more to run than either. A heat pump makes 100,000 Btu of heat here for $2.37, against $3.03 for an oil furnace. Propane runs even higher than oil at Pennsylvania's prices, so of the three, the heat pump is the cheapest to run without a gas line.

  • What if my house heats with oil or propane?

    A heat pump costs less to run than an oil furnace here, $2.37 against $3.03 per 100,000 Btu of heat. Propane costs more than oil at Pennsylvania's prices, so switching from either one to a heat pump lowers the running cost. About half the homes in Wayne County heat with oil or propane now, so this is the comparison that matters for a lot of houses here.

A man in a light blue shirt and dark trousers works on overhead ductwork above a furnace in a basement, with a tool bag on the floor and a water heater to the right.

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