Is a heat pump worth it in Kirkwood?
Kirkwood sits right on the fence — how long you'll own the house decides this one. $3,500 is what Kirkwood 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. That premium is recovered through $242 of lower running costs every year, landing the payback clock at roughly 14.5 years. It's a genuine toss-up here — Kirkwood's numbers don't point clearly either way.
Kirkwood's weather, in the numbers that matter
Kirkwood has a real but manageable winter — 3396 heating degree days a year against a 65°F base — and summers are hot enough that cooling matters as much as heating, at 2013 cooling degree days. 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 -7.1°F. That puts the seasonal coefficient of performance at 2.75 for the recommended cold-climate unit. Kirkwood 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. These numbers come from LAMBERT-ST LOUIS INTERNATIONA, the closest NOAA station, 12.3 miles out.
What it actually costs to run, year to year
Modelled on a typical 2000-square-foot house, the heat pump draws about 3,127 kWh a year to keep it warm, plus cooling, for a combined electric bill near $621 a year. That compares with roughly 35 Mcf a year of gas at Kirkwood's 14.94 per-Mcf rate — about $863 a year — against a local electricity rate of 12.83¢/kWh. Looked at as a full purchase rather than an incremental one, payback here is roughly 55.8 years, leaving the 15-year total $126 ahead.
If your home heats with electric baseboard instead of gas
Not every home in Kirkwood has gas service. Against electric-resistance heat — baseboard or an electric furnace, both 100% efficient but still just resistance — the case for switching gets stronger here. Switching saves about $817 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 9.8 years.
How Kirkwood compares nationally
Kirkwood lands at position 1796 out of 3206 cities on heating severity (coldest is 1), and 1373 out of 3206 by population size (biggest is 1). That's the middle third for winter severity among the cities covered here.
Next step for 29,348 people in Kirkwood
Kirkwood, Missouri is home to about 29,348 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 Kirkwood, nothing is lost by holding off until the current equipment genuinely fails.
Ask a local HVAC contractor for a quote before committing either way.
Reading further on this page's numbers
The methodology guide walks through exactly how Kirkwood's 2.75 seasonal COP and the rest of this page's numbers get built. At a 1.9°F design temperature, Kirkwood sits in cold-climate territory; the guide to that class of unit explains why.