Should Le Mars switch to a heat pump?

Here in Le Mars, the honest answer is that a heat pump raises your annual running cost. $3,500 is what Le Mars 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. Running costs here land $7 a year HIGHER than the furnace it replaces, so that premium is never recovered. There's no spin on that: Le Mars's numbers say wait.

Why Le Mars's climate drives this number

Le Mars has a cold winter that leans hard on heating equipment — 5485 heating degree days a year against a 65°F base — and summers add a moderate cooling load, at 716 cooling degree days. Sizing runs off the design temperature, not the average day: 5°F here (record low 3.2°F), which works out to a seasonal COP of 2.82 for the cold-climate class of unit this climate calls for. Below the 25°F line where a standard machine starts leaning on resistance backup, Le Mars sits firmly in cold-climate territory, so that's the class of unit priced here. Source: NOAA station LE MARS MUNICIPAL AIRPORT, 1.1 miles from Le Mars — the closest one on record.

Le Mars's running-cost comparison, in dollars

Modelled on a typical 2000-square-foot house, the heat pump draws about 4,925 kWh a year to keep it warm, plus cooling, for a combined electric bill near $737 a year. The gas furnace it replaces burns roughly 57 Mcf a year at 10.61 per Mcf here, for a running cost near $730 a year (electricity here runs 13.31¢/kWh). 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 $3,608 behind.

If your home heats with electric baseboard instead of gas

Not every home in Le Mars has gas service. Swap the comparison to resistance heat instead of gas, and Le Mars's answer improves. Switching saves about $1,235 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 6.5 years.

How Le Mars compares nationally

Ranked against the other 3206 cities covered, Le Mars comes in at 388 for heating severity — 1 would be the coldest place in the dataset — and 3053 by population, where 1 is largest. That's the coldest third of the dataset, where climate does most of the work behind this figure.

Deciding what's next in Le Mars, IA

About 10,674 people live in Le Mars, 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

Every constant behind this page — the 2.82 seasonal COP, the degree-day corrections, the equipment costs — is documented in the methodology guide. At a 5°F design temperature, Le Mars sits in cold-climate territory; the guide to that class of unit explains why.