Will a heat pump pay off in Cedar Rapids, IA?
Here in Cedar Rapids, the honest answer is that a heat pump raises your annual running cost. $3,500 is what Cedar Rapids 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 $100 a year here, so the extra spend stays unrecovered. There's no spin on that: Cedar Rapids's numbers say wait.
Why Cedar Rapids's climate drives this number
5468 heating degree days pile up here every year, so Cedar Rapids has a cold winter that leans hard on heating equipment; the cooling side runs to 860 cooling degree days, where summers add a moderate cooling load. Sizing runs off the design temperature, not the average day: -11°F here (record low -18.9°F), which works out to a seasonal COP of 2.44 for the cold-climate class of unit this climate calls for. Cedar Rapids 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. Climate figures trace to the nearest NOAA station, THE EASTERN IOWA AIRPORT, 5.9 miles from Cedar Rapids.
Cedar Rapids's running-cost comparison, in dollars
Electricity use for heating alone comes out to about 5,674 kWh a year on the 2000-square-foot reference house; folding in cooling puts the electric bill near $853 a year. Cedar Rapids's gas rate of 10.61 per Mcf, applied to the 57 Mcf a year the furnace burns, puts its running cost near $753 a year, against 13.31¢ per kWh for electricity. Priced as a standalone purchase rather than against a like-for-like replacement, equipment payback runs past the 15-year equipment life, for a 15-year net position $5,005 behind.
If your home heats with electric baseboard instead of gas
Not every home in Cedar Rapids has gas service. Compared with baseboard or electric-furnace resistance heat, the numbers shift in the heat pump’s favor. Switching saves about $1,138 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 7 years.
How Cedar Rapids compares nationally
Cedar Rapids lands at position 394 out of 3206 cities on heating severity (coldest is 1), and 208 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.
What to do with this number in Cedar Rapids
About 137,904 people live in Cedar Rapids, 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.
Reading further on this page's numbers
Every constant behind this page — the 2.44 seasonal COP, the degree-day corrections, the equipment costs — is documented in the methodology guide. Cedar Rapids's -11°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.