Heat pump vs. gas furnace in Carpentersville, IL

Here in Carpentersville, the honest answer is that a heat pump raises your annual running cost. $3,500 is what Carpentersville 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. The heat pump would cost about $295 more a year to run than the furnace it replaces — a premium with no payback. That's Carpentersville's own climate and rates talking, not a hedge or a caveat.

Carpentersville's weather, in the numbers that matter

Degree days tell the story here: Carpentersville racks up 5064 heating degree days each year (base 65°F), and summers add a moderate cooling load, with 915 cooling degree days on the cooling side. Sizing runs off the design temperature, not the average day: -7.1°F here (record low -14.1°F), which works out to a seasonal COP of 2.53 for the cold-climate class of unit this climate calls for. Carpentersville needs the cold-climate class of unit: past a 25°F design temperature a standard heat pump falls back on resistance backup often enough to eat the savings. Source: NOAA station DUPAGE AIRPORT, 14.6 miles from Carpentersville — the closest one on record.

Carpentersville's running-cost comparison, in dollars

Electricity use for heating alone comes out to about 5,068 kWh a year on the 2000-square-foot reference house; folding in cooling puts the electric bill near $1,115 a year. Carpentersville's gas rate of 11.25 per Mcf, applied to the 53 Mcf a year the furnace burns, puts its running cost near $819 a year, against 19.06¢ 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 $7,930 behind.

If your home heats with electric baseboard instead of gas

Not every home in Carpentersville has gas service. Compared with baseboard or electric-furnace resistance heat, the numbers shift in the heat pump’s favor. The saving here runs about $1,555 a year, which recovers the extra $8,000 spent going electric in roughly 5.1 years.

Where Carpentersville ranks in this dataset

Carpentersville lands at position 630 out of 3206 cities on heating severity (coldest is 1), and 1118 out of 3206 by population size (biggest is 1). That's the coldest third of the dataset, where climate does most of the work behind this figure.

Deciding what's next in Carpentersville, IL

Carpentersville, Illinois is home to about 37,144 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 Carpentersville, nothing is lost by holding off until the current equipment genuinely fails.

Ask a local HVAC contractor for a quote before committing either way.

Where Carpentersville's figure comes from

The methodology guide walks through exactly how Carpentersville's 2.53 seasonal COP and the rest of this page's numbers get built. Carpentersville's -7.1°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.