Will a heat pump pay off in Boone, IA?
Boone is a place where a heat pump genuinely costs more to operate than the alternative. $3,500 is what Boone would pay extra to go electric rather than replace the furnace and AC with the same again, once the $2,000 federal credit is applied. Unfortunately the electric bill outweighs the gas bill it replaces by about $120 a year here, so the extra spend stays unrecovered. There's no spin on that: Boone's numbers say wait.
The climate behind Boone's payback figure
5583 heating degree days pile up here every year, so Boone has a cold winter that leans hard on heating equipment; the cooling side runs to 641 cooling degree days, where summers add a moderate cooling load. The 99% winter design temperature here — the cold snap equipment must be sized for, not the seasonal average — is -11.2°F, against a record low of -18.4°F. That puts the seasonal coefficient of performance at 2.43 for the recommended cold-climate unit. Below the 25°F line where a standard machine starts leaning on resistance backup, Boone sits firmly in cold-climate territory, so that's the class of unit priced here. Climate figures trace to the nearest NOAA station, BOONE MUNICIPAL AIRPORT, 1.3 miles from Boone.
Boone's running-cost comparison, in dollars
Modelled on a typical 2000-square-foot house, the heat pump draws about 5,818 kWh a year to keep it warm, plus cooling, for a combined electric bill near $847 a year. Boone's gas rate of 10.61 per Mcf, applied to the 58 Mcf a year the furnace burns, puts its running cost near $727 a year, against 13.31¢ per kWh for electricity. Looked at as a full purchase rather than an incremental one, payback here is longer than the 15-year equipment life, leaving the 15-year total $5,294 behind.
If your home heats with electric baseboard instead of gas
Plenty of homes in Boone heat with electricity alone, no gas line involved. Compared with baseboard or electric-furnace resistance heat, the numbers shift in the heat pump’s favor. About $1,145 a year comes back this way, enough that the 7-year payback clears the $8,000 premium comfortably within the equipment's life.
Where Boone ranks in this dataset
Ranked against the other 3206 cities covered, Boone comes in at 342 for heating severity — 1 would be the coldest place in the dataset — and 2735 by population, where 1 is largest. That's the coldest third of the dataset, where climate does most of the work behind this figure.
Next step for 12,461 people in Boone
About 12,461 people live in Boone, Iowa, and every number on this page is what a contractor would actually work from when quoting a system here — the point isn't to replace that quote, it's to tell you whether to bother asking for one. Here, there's no cost penalty to waiting until your current furnace or AC actually needs replacing.
Get quotes from local HVAC contractors before deciding.
Reading further on this page's numbers
Every constant behind this page — the 2.43 seasonal COP, the degree-day corrections, the equipment costs — is documented in the methodology guide. Boone's -11.2°F design temperature is below the 25°F line, which is why a cold-climate unit is the right call here — see what that changes in the cold-climate unit guide.