Pennsylvania Heating

Heat pump vs furnace in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania

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Serving Allegheny County homes

Which costs less to run in Allegheny 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

    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 cushions and a blue fringed throw sits beneath a dark-framed window overlooking a green garden, with a wooden coffee table holding a bowl, mug and books in the foreground and a table lamp and framed landscape painting at left.

  • 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?

  • Runs on the gas most homes here already use

    Most homes in Allegheny County already have a gas line run to the house, since 80.5% of occupied homes here heat with utility gas. If yours is one of them, a gas furnace just uses what's already there.

    A snow-covered residential street with wood-sided houses, a white-railed front staircase and exterior gas meter in the foreground, bare trees overhead, and a person walking along a cleared sidewalk in the distance.

  • Fast, strong heat on demand

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

    Mudroom entry with a navy front door with snowy trees visible through its glass panes, snow-covered boots on a blue woven rug, a floor vent, a wooden bench with wicker baskets, a blue mug and knit blanket, and dark coats hanging on wall hooks.

  • 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.

What winter here does to a heat pump

Your furnace or heat pump runs eight months a year here, October through May, and that's the decision that matters most. A heat pump heats and cools from one system, and it costs more up front to rule it out without a look. But a standard heat pump starts losing ground below 40°F, and it often needs backup heat below about 35°F. The average overnight low here in December, January and February is 24°F. That's below both marks. It isn't a rare cold snap doing that, it's the ordinary winter night.

About 115 nights a year here drop to freezing or below, roughly half the nights across the whole heating season. Every one of those nights falls below the point where a standard heat pump's output starts to fall short of its rating. So for about half the season, a standard heat pump is working below its rated capacity, not above it. The furnace doesn't have that problem. It burns gas and makes its full heat regardless of how cold it is outside.

This doesn't rule out a heat pump. It rules out a standard one, or at least means you shouldn't expect it to carry the house alone on the coldest nights. A cold-climate heat pump is built for this. To earn that label a unit has to still make more heat than electricity it uses at 5°F, and hold onto most of its 47°F capacity at that temperature. That's a different machine than the federal-minimum unit priced in the running-cost numbers above. Only 2 nights a year here reach 0°F, so even a cold-climate heat pump is rarely asked to do its hardest work.

A plowed residential street lined with snowbanks, with blue and white clapboard houses, brick chimneys, a white picket fence, and bare trees under a clear sky.

What it costs to run, and what backup heat means

At Pennsylvania's current prices, a gas furnace makes the same heat for less: $1.64 against $2.37 per 100,000 Btu, both figures for a machine built to the federal minimum. That gap is why four out of five homes in this county heat with gas already. If your house already has a gas line, that's the cheaper path to the same heat, before anything else is weighed.

A heat pump's running cost is only part of the picture if it needs backup heat on the coldest nights, since that backup usually runs on electricity too and the $2.37 figure above doesn't include it. In practice that backup is asked to do less than you'd guess. A two-winter field test of cold-climate heat pumps in occupied homes found backup heat supplied only a small share of total heat between 0°F and 35°F, and the units running on backup alone was rare even above 0°F. So the nights that matter here, the 115 at or below freezing, are mostly within reach of the heat pump itself, not handed off to backup.

Cooling is the other side of this. A heat pump is also the air conditioner, one system for both. A furnace only heats, so for the three months a year this county runs cooling, June through August, a furnace is doing nothing and a separate AC unit is doing the work. That's not a cost number, just a fact about what each machine is doing across the full year, not just the eight months the heat runs.

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

Snow-covered stone steps lead to a blue storm door on a blue clapboard house, with a stacked woodpile, a snowy stone wall, and bare shrubs nearby.

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 ground as it gets colder. Below 40°F its heat output falls short of its rated capacity, and below about 35°F it often needs backup heat to keep up. The overnight low here averages 24°F across December, January and February, and about 115 nights a year drop to freezing or below, so a heat pump alone would be working below its rating most winter nights.

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

    For most homes, yes. The overnight low here averages 24°F in winter and falls to freezing or below on about 115 nights a year, well past the roughly 35°F mark where a standard heat pump's output starts to fall behind. A cold climate model holds up better in the cold, keeping at least 70 percent of its capacity at 5°F, but backup heat is still the common way to cover the coldest nights, including the two or so a year that reach 0°F.

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

    Yes, that setup is called a dual fuel system, and it uses each machine for what it does best. The heat pump carries the heat down to the point it struggles in the cold, and the furnace takes over for the coldest nights. In Allegheny County the overnight low averages 24°F across December, January and February, with about 115 nights at or below freezing, so the furnace would still see real use.

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

    No, a gas furnace costs less to run here. A furnace built to the federal minimum makes heat for $1.64 per 100,000 Btu at Pennsylvania's gas prices, against $2.37 for a heat pump at minimum efficiency on electricity. That's about 30% more for the heat pump to make the same heat.

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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