Pennsylvania Heating

Heat pump vs furnace in Indiana County, Pennsylvania

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Which costs less to run in Indiana County?

An outdoor air conditioner condenser unit on a concrete pad beside a dark blue horizontal-lap sided wall, with a disconnect box and conduit on the wall, surrounded by bare soil at night.

Heat pump

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

A beige residential furnace with a louvered front panel stands on a concrete floor in a basement corner with dark blue walls, connected to a galvanized metal flue pipe rising to the ceiling.

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?

  • 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 cabinets, white subway tile backsplash, wooden open shelves holding bowls and plants, a light speckled island with an induction cooktop, a blue kettle and mug, two wooden stools, and a window over the sink.

  • Steady, even comfort

    It eases up and down with the weather. There are fewer swings between too warm and too cool.

    A dimly lit living room with a navy armchair holding an open book, a gray throw and light blue pillow, a lit table lamp, built-in bookshelves, a lit gas fireplace with stone surround, and a golden retriever sleeping on a patterned rug.

  • Heats and cools in one system

    Winter and summer are covered by the same outdoor unit. That's one machine to service instead of two.

    A living room with a beige sectional sofa, navy throw and pillows, a wooden coffee table holding a woven tray and plant, dark built-in shelving, and a large window with navy curtains overlooking a green garden.

Where does a furnace shine?

  • Runs on the gas most homes here already use

    More than half the homes in Indiana County already heat with gas. If yours is one of them, the line's already run to the house, so a gas furnace just hooks into what's there.

    A row of wood-sided houses with covered porches and white railings along a sidewalk, with patchy snow on the ground, bare trees, and an exterior gas meter with pipes on a dark stone foundation in the foreground.

  • Pairs with any central AC

    The ductwork that delivers heat in winter delivers cool air in summer once an AC coil is added.

    A metal floor register vent set into a wood plank floor beside a sheer white curtain lit by sunlight, with a woven jute rug in the foreground and a dark blue cabinet at left.

  • 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 white pleated air filter in a basement with a furnace, pipes, a blue door, and shelving holding storage bins and potted plants.

Can a heat pump keep up with winter here

Winters in Indiana County are long and genuinely cold, and that's the first thing to weigh before you pick a heat pump. The heat runs about eight months a year here, October through May, and the overnight low averages 21°F across December, January and February. About 135 nights a year drop to freezing or below, over half the nights in the heating season. A standard central heat pump loses capacity below 40°F and often leans on backup heat below about 35°F. Here, every one of those 135 freezing nights falls under both marks. That doesn't mean a heat pump can't heat your house. It means on most winter nights here, it's working below its rated output, and the backup heat built into the system is doing real work, not sitting idle for a rare cold snap.

The exception is a cold climate heat pump, the kind carrying the ENERGY STAR Cold Climate mark. To earn that mark, it has to hold at least 70 percent of its 47°F heating capacity at 5°F, and still make 1.75 units of heat for every unit of electricity it uses at that temperature, checked by independent testing. That's a different machine than the federal-minimum unit priced in the running-cost comparison above. In a two-winter field test of prototype cold-climate heat pumps in occupied homes, backup heat covered only a small share of the heat needed between 0°F and 35°F, and the system running on backup alone was rare even above 0°F. Indiana County sees about 4 nights a year at 0°F or below, a small slice of the 135 freezing nights. A cold climate model is built for a county like this. A standard one will get you through winter, but it will call on backup heat far more often than it would somewhere milder.

A two-story navy blue clapboard house with a snow-covered roof, brick chimney and white picket fence, flanked by light blue and gray houses, with plowed snowbanks along a wet asphalt street.

What it costs to run, and what that means for your choice

At Pennsylvania's prices, a gas furnace is the cheapest of the three to run here: $1.64 per 100,000 Btu, against $2.37 for a heat pump and $3.03 for an oil furnace. That heat pump figure is its federal minimum seasonal rating with nothing added for backup heat, so on the coldest nights here, when backup heat is doing some of the work, the gap in your actual bill runs narrower than these numbers suggest. If you're deciding between a heat pump and a gas furnace on running cost alone, the furnace wins, and gas is already what a little over half the homes in the county heat with. If the choice is between a heat pump and oil, the heat pump costs less to run, $2.37 against $3.03, and that's worth knowing if oil is what you're replacing.

Cooling is where the heat pump answers a question the furnace can't. A furnace only heats. For the two months a year cooling runs here, July and August, it has nothing to do, and you'd still need a separate air conditioner alongside it. A heat pump handles both in one system. So the choice isn't only about the cost of heat. If you already have central air and a working furnace, running cost and winter performance are what should decide it, and here that points toward the furnace, especially a standard one. If you're replacing both at once, or you don't have cooling yet, the heat pump's running cost looks worse on paper but it's buying you something the furnace alone doesn't: one system for both seasons, and if you choose a cold climate model, a machine built for the kind of winter nights this county actually has.

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

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?

    It can, but a standard one loses ground exactly when you need it most. Below 40°F a standard heat pump puts out less than its rated capacity, and below about 35°F it often needs backup heat. The average overnight low here is 21°F across December, January and February, and about 135 nights a year dip to freezing or below, so that shortfall is not a rare event here, it is most of the winter.

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

    Most homeowners here choose to have it. The overnight low here averages 21°F in winter, well below the roughly 35°F mark where a standard heat pump's output starts to fall behind its rating. A cold-climate heat pump holds up much better in cold air, but even in field testing, backup heat still covered part of the load on the coldest nights.

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

    Yes, and here that often makes sense. A furnace and a heat pump can run as a dual-fuel system, with the heat pump carrying the milder days and the furnace taking over once it gets cold enough that the heat pump struggles. A standard heat pump's output falls short of its rating below 40°F and often needs backup below about 35°F, and the overnight low here averages 21°F in December, January and February, so your furnace would still have real work to do.

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

    No, a gas furnace is cheaper to run here. At Pennsylvania's prices, a furnace built to the federal minimum makes 100,000 Btu of heat for $1.64, against $2.37 for a heat pump built to the same minimum. That gap is the fuel, not the house: gas simply costs less per Btu here than electricity does.

A person in a blue shirt and black gloves kneels beside an outdoor air conditioning condenser unit on a concrete pad next to blue lap siding, working on copper refrigerant lines, with a wrench, drill and brass fittings on a cloth in the foreground.

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