Pennsylvania Heating

Heat pump vs furnace in Lycoming County, Pennsylvania

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Which costs less to run in Lycoming County?

An outdoor air conditioning condenser unit with a top-mounted fan grille sits on a concrete pad beside a dark blue lap-sided wall with a small electrical disconnect box and conduit above it, surrounded by mulch at night.

Heat pump

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

A beige residential furnace stands on a concrete basement floor against a dark blue painted wall, with galvanized metal ductwork and a flue pipe rising from its top and white pipes running 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?

  • 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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  • 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 shaker cabinets, white upper cabinets, light stone countertops, a glass cooktop with a stainless steel kettle on an island, two wooden stools, a gray tile backsplash, potted greenery, and a window showing trees outside.

  • 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 beige sofa with a light blue cushion and navy knitted fringed throw sits in front of a dark navy multi-pane window overlooking a garden with hydrangeas, beside a wooden coffee table holding books, a mug and a vase of hydrangeas, with a woven basket and potted plant to the right on a jute rug.

Where does a furnace shine?

  • Strong, steady heat in hard cold

    Winter nights here average 19°F, and a furnace puts out heat hot enough to push back against that fast. You won't feel it working harder on the coldest nights the way you might with something else.

    A navy-blue clapboard house with white trim and a covered porch at dusk, its windows lit, surrounded by deep snow, conifers, a lit small evergreen tree, and lanterns along a shoveled path.

  • Fast, strong heat on demand

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

    Entryway with a navy door, snow-dusted boots on a dark mat, a floor vent in wood flooring, a sheer curtain, and a steaming mug on a cushioned bench with a basket beneath and coats hanging above.

  • Proven, simple, easy to get serviced

    Parts are easy to find and most repairs are routine. Getting one fixed rarely means waiting on a specialist.

    A gloved hand holds a pleated air filter with a white cardboard frame in front of a furnace and ducting, beside shelving with plastic storage bins.

What winter here does to a heat pump

Heat runs eight months a year here, October through May, against two months of cooling. The overnight low averages 19°F across December, January and February. That is below 40°F, the point where a standard heat pump starts making less heat than its rating, and below 35°F, the point where it often needs backup heat to make up the difference. About 120 nights a year fall to freezing or below, roughly half the nights in the heating season, and every one of them sits below both marks.

That does not mean the heat pump quits. It means that on about half the nights of the season, a standard model is leaning on backup heat to hold the house at temperature, and backup heat is usually electric resistance, the most expensive way to turn electricity into warmth. The $2.37 per 100,000 Btu shown above is the heat pump's cost without any backup heat added in. On the colder nights here, the real cost runs higher than that.

The real deep cold is rare. About 2 nights a year reach 0°F or below, a small part of the 120 freezing nights. That is the gap a cold climate heat pump is built for: a long stretch of nights in the 20s and 30s with only a couple of nights that drop much further. To earn the ENERGY STAR Cold Climate mark, a heat pump has to keep making at least 1.75 units of heat per unit of electricity at 5°F, and hold on to 70 percent of its warm-weather capacity at that temperature, verified by outside testing. In a two-winter field test of prototype cold-climate units in occupied homes, backup heat covered only a small share of the heat needed between 0°F and 35°F, and running on backup alone was rare even above 0°F. A standard heat pump carries no such rating, and nothing here says which kind a given house would get.

A navy blue clapboard house with white trim, a light blue front door and a brick chimney stands beside other white houses along a plowed street banked with snow under a clear sky.

What it costs to run

Set the cold nights aside and look at the fuel bill alone. A gas furnace built to the federal minimum makes 100,000 Btu of heat for $1.64 here. A heat pump built to the same minimum makes the same heat for $2.37, with nothing added for backup heat. An oil furnace costs $3.03. Gas is cheapest, the heat pump comes next, oil is the most expensive of the three.

Utility gas already heats about one in three homes in the county, electricity a little over one in four, fuel oil about one in five. A gas furnace does one job. It sits unused for the four months nobody here is running heat, and it has no part in the two months of summer cooling. A heat pump runs the air conditioning too, so its winter running cost is only part of what it is doing for the house over a year.

What this comes down to is what the house already has and what the owner wants one system to cover. Where a gas line already runs to the house, a furnace costs less to run through the winter, by enough that a standard heat pump does not make up the difference. Where there is no gas line, or where one system handling both heat and air conditioning is worth more than the lowest fuel bill, the heat pump is doing a job the furnace cannot, and on a county with 120 freezing nights a year, the cold climate version is the one built for it.

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

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Common questions about heat pumps and furnaces

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

    Yes, but not at full strength on the coldest nights. A standard heat pump's output drops below 40°F and keeps dropping as it gets colder, and the average overnight low here is 19°F. That is why most heat pump installs in this county pair it with a backup heat source for the hardest cold.

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

    On most nights here, no. Below about 35°F a standard heat pump often needs backup heat, and that mark gets crossed on about half the nights the heat runs here. A cold-climate heat pump holds up better in the teens and below, but check which kind you're being quoted before you decide you don't need backup.

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

    Yes, and here that often makes sense. A heat pump can carry the house most nights, and the furnace only has to pick up on the roughly 120 nights a year that fall to freezing or below. On the 2 nights a year that hit 0°F, the furnace is doing real work, not just topping off.

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

    No, a gas furnace runs cheaper here. At Pennsylvania's prices a furnace makes 100,000 Btu of heat for $1.64 against $2.37 for a heat pump. Against oil the order flips: a heat pump beats an oil furnace, $2.37 to $3.03.

A person's arm in a navy sleeve reaches to adjust a round white wall-mounted thermostat above a light switch, with an open tool bag below and a living room with a sofa in the background.

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