Is a heat pump worth it in Lombard?

In Lombard, a heat pump would cost more to run each year than what you have now. 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). Unfortunately the electric bill outweighs the gas bill it replaces by about $240 a year here, so the extra spend stays unrecovered. That's Lombard's own climate and rates talking, not a hedge or a caveat.

Lombard's weather, in the numbers that matter

4837 heating degree days pile up here every year, so Lombard has a real but manageable winter; the cooling side runs to 1162 cooling degree days, where summers are hot enough that cooling matters as much as heating. Sizing runs off the design temperature, not the average day: -5.1°F here (record low -9.9°F), which works out to a seasonal COP of 2.58 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, Lombard sits firmly in cold-climate territory, so that's the class of unit priced here. Climate figures trace to the nearest NOAA station, CHICAGO O'HARE INTERNATIONAL, 7.3 miles from Lombard.

The month-to-month numbers for Lombard

A 2000-square-foot house here would pull roughly 4,747 heating kilowatt-hours annually on top of cooling, totalling about $1,094 a year on electricity. Lombard's gas rate of 11.25 per Mcf, applied to the 50 Mcf a year the furnace burns, puts its running cost near $854 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 $7,099 behind.

The other scenario: no gas furnace to begin with

Not every home in Lombard has gas service. Compared with baseboard or electric-furnace resistance heat, the numbers shift in the heat pump’s favor. The saving here runs about $1,528 a year, which recovers the extra $8,000 spent going electric in roughly 5.2 years.

How Lombard compares nationally

Ranked against the other 3206 cities covered, Lombard comes in at 907 for heating severity — 1 would be the coldest place in the dataset — and 926 by population, where 1 is largest. 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 Lombard

Lombard, Illinois is home to about 44,490 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 Lombard, nothing is lost by holding off until the current equipment genuinely fails.

Ask a local HVAC contractor for a quote before committing either way.

Where Lombard's figure comes from

Nothing above is a black box: the methodology guide shows the full arithmetic behind Lombard's 2.58 seasonal COP and payback figure. At a -5.1°F design temperature, Lombard sits in cold-climate territory; the guide to that class of unit explains why.