Will a heat pump pay off in Hickory Hills, IL?
Hickory Hills is a place where a heat pump genuinely costs more to operate than the alternative. Swap a failed furnace and AC for a heat pump rather than buying like-for-like, and the extra cost here runs $3,500 after a $2,000 federal tax credit. The heat pump would cost about $151 more a year to run than the furnace it replaces — a premium with no payback. There's no spin on that: Hickory Hills's numbers say wait.
Why Hickory Hills's climate drives this number
Degree days tell the story here: Hickory Hills racks up 4543 heating degree days each year (base 65°F), and summers are hot enough that cooling matters as much as heating, with 1348 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 -9°F. That puts the seasonal coefficient of performance at 2.75 for the recommended cold-climate unit. Hickory Hills 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 CHICAGO MIDWAY INTL ARPT, 5.8 miles from Hickory Hills — the closest one on record.
The month-to-month numbers for Hickory Hills
Modelled on a typical 2000-square-foot house, the heat pump draws about 4,183 kWh a year to keep it warm, plus cooling, for a combined electric bill near $1,016 a year. Hickory Hills's gas rate of 11.25 per Mcf, applied to the 47 Mcf a year the furnace burns, puts its running cost near $865 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 $5,767 behind.
If your home heats with electric baseboard instead of gas
Plenty of homes in Hickory Hills heat with electricity alone, no gas line involved. Swap the comparison to resistance heat instead of gas, and Hickory Hills's answer improves. The saving here runs about $1,509 a year, which recovers the extra $8,000 spent going electric in roughly 5.3 years.
Where Hickory Hills ranks in this dataset
Among 3206 cities, Hickory Hills's winter puts it at rank 1162 for severity, while its size puts it at rank 2496 for population — 1 in both cases being the extreme. That's the middle third for winter severity among the cities covered here.
Next step for 14,118 people in Hickory Hills
About 14,118 people live in Hickory Hills, 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.
Where Hickory Hills's figure comes from
Every constant behind this page — the 2.75 seasonal COP, the degree-day corrections, the equipment costs — is documented in the methodology guide. Hickory Hills's 1.9°F design temperature falls on the cold side of the 25°F cutoff the cold-climate unit guide walks through.