Heat pump vs. gas furnace in Cahokia Heights, IL
Here in Cahokia Heights, the honest answer is that a heat pump raises your annual running cost. Against a like-for-like gas furnace and AC swap, going electric costs $3,500 more up front here (already netting out a $2,000 tax credit). Running costs here land $70 a year HIGHER than the furnace it replaces, so that premium is never recovered. That's Cahokia Heights's own climate and rates talking, not a hedge or a caveat.
How cold Cahokia Heights actually gets
Degree days tell the story here: Cahokia Heights racks up 3639 heating degree days each year (base 65°F), and summers are hot enough that cooling matters as much as heating, with 1688 cooling degree days on the cooling side. The 99% winter design temperature here — the cold snap equipment must be sized for, not the seasonal average — is 1.9°F, against a record low of -5.1°F. That puts the seasonal coefficient of performance at 2.75 for the recommended cold-climate unit. A cold-climate unit is the right call in Cahokia Heights — below 25°F design temperature, a standard heat pump leans hard on electric-resistance backup, which erases most of the savings. These numbers come from ST LOUIS DOWNTOWN AIRPORT, the closest NOAA station, 0.1 miles out.
What it actually costs to run, year to year
Electricity use for heating alone comes out to about 3,351 kWh a year on the 2000-square-foot reference house; folding in cooling puts the electric bill near $913 a year. That compares with roughly 38 Mcf a year of gas at Cahokia Heights's 11.25 per-Mcf rate — about $843 a year — against a local electricity rate of 19.06¢/kWh. 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 $4,545 behind.
If your home heats with electric baseboard instead of gas
Plenty of homes in Cahokia Heights 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. Switching saves about $1,260 a year here — a heat pump moving heat rather than generating it needs far less electricity than resistance coils — so the extra $8,000 spent up front comes back in about 6.3 years.
Cahokia Heights against the rest of the country
Cahokia Heights lands at position 1716 out of 3206 cities on heating severity (coldest is 1), and 2187 out of 3206 by population size (biggest is 1). That's the middle third for winter severity among the cities covered here.
Deciding what's next in Cahokia Heights, IL
Cahokia Heights, Illinois is home to about 17,052 people, and the figures above are the same ones a local HVAC contractor uses to size and quote a system — this site doesn't guess where a real quote would land, it just tells you whether it's worth asking for one. In Cahokia Heights, nothing is lost by holding off until the current equipment genuinely fails.
Line up a few local HVAC quotes before you decide.
Where Cahokia Heights's figure comes from
The methodology guide walks through exactly how Cahokia Heights's 2.75 seasonal COP and the rest of this page's numbers get built. Cahokia Heights's 1.9°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.