I’ll explain why in a moment, but first — I can always see the next objection coming: heat pumps don’t work in cold climates. 

When you look at how many hours a city actually spends at certain temperatures, that objection largely goes away. 

Bin data is useful here — it shows you how many hours a year that a city spends in a given temperature range. For reference, 750 hours is roughly a month. Let’s start with the hardest city I could find in North America: Fairbanks, Alaska. 

Even in Fairbanks — the coldest city with really solid temperature data I can find in North America — 58% of the year falls in the Easy range, with another 25% in Medium. Only 16% of the year is genuinely Hard. 

I consider everything above 25–30°F easy territory for a single-stage heat pump in most homes. The Medium range calls for a cold climate rated heat pump. The Hard range requires either a top-of-the-line unit like a Hyper Heat or DOE Cold Climate Challenge-rated system — or just make it a hybrid and let the furnace handle the coldest hours. That’s often the simpler answer. 

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When you look at how many hours a climate actually spends in each temperature range, installing a heat pump instead of an air conditioner stops being a gamble and starts being the obvious decision. On normal winter days in many cities, the middle of the day still falls in the Easy range. 

Fairbanks is an extreme case. Minneapolis is the most realistic worst-case for the continental United States — the largest cold-weather city in the U.S. Even there, 81% of the year falls in the Easy range, with another 17% in Medium. Hard hours account for just 3% of the year.  

Then there’s Cleveland, where I cut my teeth on heat pumps, installing my first one back in 2014. The systems I installed often made it through entire winters without ever triggering resistance heat. Cleveland sits at 91% Easy, 9% Medium, with less than 1% of the year in the Hard range. The first two were heat pump-only systems in century homes. Both are still running.  

And then there’s Charlotte, North Carolina — 99% Easy, less than 1% Medium, no Hard hours at all. If you’re installing a furnace in Charlotte, it’s worth asking why.  

If you watch actual runtime data, a single-stage system sized to cooling load will frequently handle a home down to 25–30°F — which covers the Easy zone entirely and often a bit beyond. In most homes, that’s the majority of the heating season handled by equipment your client was going to buy anyway — just with the addition of a reversing valve. 

My rule of thumb: climate zones 1 through 4 are prime candidates for heat pump-only systems. Zones 5 through 8 are prime candidates for hybrids. Either way, they involve a heat pump — a two-way air conditioner that can heat as well as cool, since your clients are already buying an air conditioner. 

The reason heat pumps feel better is simple: they run more and even out temperatures better than an oversized furnace can. 

Constantly pushing out a small amount of heat warms every surface in the house — the walls, the windows, the couch, the ceiling, the floors. 

Post install, clients consistently told me they couldn’t believe it was the same house. 

This hit home for me when I walked into that first client’s house with a new heat pump in a 100-year-old home and thought, “This is the most comfortable home I’ve ever been in, by an order of magnitude.” We hadn’t even finished the insulation and air sealing yet. I believed it intellectually before that, but that day I felt it in my bones. 

Every friend and colleague who has tried a next-generation heat pump has ended up feeling the same way. The next time you install a system in your own home, use a heat pump — I highly recommend a fully communicating one — whether on its own or as a hybrid. Give it an honest chance and see what you think. 

P.S. Curious what this chart looks like in your city? Try out the calculator. It covers 185 cities across the United States and Canada.