Pennsylvania Heating

Heat pump vs furnace in Chester County, Pennsylvania

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Which costs less to run in Chester 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 beige sheet-metal furnace with a louvered front panel stands on a concrete floor against a dark blue painted block wall, with a metal flue pipe and ductwork above and older pipes to the left.

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

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

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  • 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.

    A cream sofa with blue and striped cushions and a blue knit throw sits beneath a multi-pane window with pale blue interior shutters overlooking a garden, with a rustic wood coffee table, potted plant, and dark blue panelled door nearby.

  • Steady, even comfort

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

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Where does a furnace shine?

  • Fast, strong heat on demand

    The air coming from the vents feels genuinely hot. That's welcome on a freezing morning.

    Interior entryway with a blue door with a window, a sheer curtain blowing inward, a steaming mug on a wooden bench with boots stored beneath, snow-dusted fur-lined boots on a stone floor, and a floor vent near the threshold.

  • Pairs with any central AC

    A furnace's blower and ducts carry cooled air too. Adding central AC uses the same system.

    A metal floor vent set into wood plank flooring near a window with a sheer white curtain, with sunlight casting shadows across the floor and a dark blue cabinet at left.

  • Proven, simple, easy to get serviced

    The design is simple and well understood. That keeps service calls short.

    A gloved hand holds a white pleated air filter in front of a blue storage cabinet with folded towels and a gray furnace unit.

Can a heat pump actually keep up here

Winter here is long and it gets cold enough to matter. Heat runs seven months a year, October through April, and the overnight low averages 25°F across December, January and February. More than half the nights in that stretch, about 125 of them, drop to freezing or below.

A standard heat pump starts losing ground before it gets that cold. Below 40°F it puts out less heat than its rating says. Below about 35°F it often needs backup heat to make up the difference. At 25°F, the average winter night here, both of those are already in effect, not some rare cold snap but the normal overnight low all winter.

That does not mean a heat pump leaves you cold. It means the standard version is working below its rating on most winter nights, and leaning on backup heat to cover the rest. A cold climate model is built for this. To carry that label it has to prove, under independent testing, that it still makes 1.75 units of heat for every unit of electricity at 5°F, and holds onto at least 70 percent of its warm weather capacity down there. That is colder than almost any night Chester County sees. The two nights a year here that reach 0°F are the extreme, not the norm, and field testing of cold climate heat pumps in occupied homes found backup heat carrying only a small part of the load even between 0°F and 35°F, with the backup running alone rarely above 0°F.

So the honest version is this: a standard heat pump will struggle on an average winter night here. A cold climate heat pump is built and tested for weather colder than Chester County gets almost every night of the year.

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

Money points the other way. At Pennsylvania's average prices, a gas furnace makes 100,000 Btu of heat for $1.64. A heat pump makes the same heat for $2.37. A furnace is the cheaper machine to run here, by about 30 percent, using each one's federal minimum efficiency and nothing added for backup heat on the coldest nights.

That gap is the whole case for a furnace, if you already have gas. Utility gas heats 35.9 percent of homes in the county, a little over one in three, so plenty of houses already have the line run and just need the equipment. For those homes a furnace is the cheaper fuel and the stronger cold weather performer at the same time, no tradeoff to weigh.

If your house heats with oil instead, the comparison changes. Oil costs more to run than either option, $3.03 per 100,000 Btu against $2.37 for a heat pump and $1.64 for a furnace. Switching off oil to a heat pump costs less to run than staying on oil, even before counting that a heat pump also cools the house all summer, June through August, which an oil furnace never does.

A furnace only heats. For the three months a year it is not running heat, it has no part to play, while a heat pump is doing the cooling instead. That is worth something if your air conditioner is getting old at the same time as your heating system, since one heat pump replaces both jobs rather than two separate machines.

Put plainly: if gas already runs to your house, a furnace costs less to run and handles the cold with room to spare. If you are on oil, moving to a heat pump costs less than staying on oil and adds cooling you do not have now. Either way, if a heat pump is the answer, ask whether it is a cold climate model, because at Chester County's winter lows, that is the detail the rest of the decision rests on.

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

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Common questions about heat pumps and furnaces

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

    Yes, but a standard heat pump loses capacity doing it. Below 40°F it puts out less heat than its rating, and below about 35°F it often needs backup heat. The average overnight low here runs 25°F across December, January and February, so a cold-climate model or a backup heat source matters more here than in a milder state.

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

    For a standard heat pump, yes. Its heating efficiency drops below about 35°F outside, and the overnight low here averages 25°F in winter with about 125 nights a year at or below freezing. A cold-climate heat pump holds onto more of its capacity at low temperatures, but check what any system you're considering is rated down to before deciding you can skip backup heat.

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

    Yes, that's a dual fuel setup, and it suits a place like Chester County. The heat pump carries the house most of the year, then the furnace takes over on the roughly 125 nights here that hit freezing or below, where a standard heat pump's output falls short of its rating and it often needs backup heat anyway.

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

    No, a furnace costs less to run here. A gas furnace makes 100,000 Btu of heat for $1.64 at Pennsylvania's prices, against $2.37 for a heat pump built to the federal minimum. An oil furnace runs higher still, at $3.03.

A kneeling person in a blue shirt and work gloves connects refrigerant lines at the side of a gray outdoor heat pump unit on a concrete pad beside a blue clapboard house, with a manifold gauge set and hand tools lying on mulch in the foreground.

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