Will a heat pump pay off in Carroll, IA?

In Carroll, a heat pump would cost more to run each year than what you have now. $3,500 is what Carroll 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 $130 more a year to run than the furnace it replaces — a premium with no payback. There's no spin on that: Carroll's numbers say wait.

The climate behind Carroll's payback figure

5721 heating degree days pile up here every year, so Carroll has a cold winter that leans hard on heating equipment; the cooling side runs to 535 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. A cold-climate unit is the right call in Carroll — 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 ARTHUR N. NEU AIRPORT, the closest NOAA station, 4.2 miles out.

Carroll's running-cost comparison, in dollars

Electricity use for heating alone comes out to about 5,961 kWh a year on the 2000-square-foot reference house; folding in cooling puts the electric bill near $854 a year. Carroll's gas rate of 10.61 per Mcf, applied to the 60 Mcf a year the furnace burns, puts its running cost near $724 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 $5,446 behind.

Electric resistance heat in Carroll, compared

Gas isn't universal in Carroll — many houses run on electric heat already. Swap the comparison to resistance heat instead of gas, and Carroll's answer improves. Switching saves about $1,166 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 6.9 years.

How Carroll compares nationally

Ranked against the other 3206 cities covered, Carroll comes in at 303 for heating severity — 1 would be the coldest place in the dataset — and 3176 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 10,125 people in Carroll

About 10,125 people live in Carroll, 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.

Line up a few local HVAC quotes before you decide.

More on how this number was built

The methodology guide walks through exactly how Carroll's 2.43 seasonal COP and the rest of this page's numbers get built. Carroll'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.