Heat pump vs. gas furnace in Dixon, IL

Here in Dixon, 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 $414 a year HIGHER than the furnace it replaces, so that premium is never recovered. There's no spin on that: Dixon's numbers say wait.

The climate behind Dixon's payback figure

Dixon has a cold winter that leans hard on heating equipment — 5573 heating degree days a year against a 65°F base — and summers add a moderate cooling load, at 690 cooling degree days. The 99% winter design temperature here — the cold snap equipment must be sized for, not the seasonal average — is -12.8°F, against a record low of -17.5°F. That puts the seasonal coefficient of performance at 2.39 for the recommended cold-climate unit. Dixon 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 ROCHELLE MUNI ARPT-KORITZ FIE, 20.8 miles from Dixon — the closest one on record.

The month-to-month numbers for Dixon

Modelled on a typical 2000-square-foot house, the heat pump draws about 5,904 kWh a year to keep it warm, plus cooling, for a combined electric bill near $1,238 a year. Dixon's gas rate of 11.25 per Mcf, applied to the 58 Mcf a year the furnace burns, puts its running cost near $823 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 $9,712 behind.

The other scenario: no gas furnace to begin with

Plenty of homes in Dixon heat with electricity alone, no gas line involved. Against electric-resistance heat — baseboard or an electric furnace, both 100% efficient but still just resistance — the case for switching gets stronger here. The saving here runs about $1,623 a year, which recovers the extra $8,000 spent going electric in roughly 4.9 years.

Where Dixon ranks in this dataset

Among 3206 cities, Dixon's winter puts it at rank 346 for severity, while its size puts it at rank 2374 for population — 1 in both cases being the extreme. That's the coldest third of the dataset, where climate does most of the work behind this figure.

Next step for 15,156 people in Dixon

About 15,156 people live in Dixon, Illinois, 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 Dixon's 2.39 seasonal COP and the rest of this page's numbers get built. Dixon's -12.8°F design temperature falls on the cold side of the 25°F cutoff the cold-climate unit guide walks through.