Heat Pump Payback in Markham, IL
Will a heat pump pay off in Markham, IL?
In Markham, a heat pump would cost more to run each year than what you have now. $5,500 is what Markham would pay extra to go electric rather than replace the furnace and AC with the same again. Unfortunately the electric bill outweighs the gas bill it replaces by about $278 a year here, so the extra spend stays unrecovered. That's Markham's own climate and rates talking, not a hedge or a caveat.
Compare against another city
This runs the same numbers for 3206 US cities, not just Markham. Look one up here.
How cold Markham actually gets
Markham has a real but manageable winter, 4971 heating degree days a year against a 65°F base, and summers add a moderate cooling load, at 864 cooling degree days. The 99% winter design temperature here, the cold snap equipment must be sized for, not the seasonal average, is -5.3°F, and the coldest daily reading in the 2024 station record was -10.7°F. That puts the seasonal coefficient of performance at 2.57 for the recommended cold-climate unit. Markham 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 Lansing Municipal AP, 9.2 miles from Markham, the closest one on record.
What it actually costs to run, year to year
Modelled on a typical 2000-square-foot house, the heat pump draws about 4,898 kWh a year to keep it warm, plus cooling, for a combined electric bill near $1,074 a year. Markham's gas rate of $11.25 per Mcf, applied to the 52 Mcf a year the furnace burns, puts the current furnace-and-AC running cost near $796 a year, against 19.06¢ per kWh for electricity. Because the heat pump costs more to run here, the gap only widens with time: $9,671 behind after 15 years compared with replacing the furnace and AC like-for-like.
The break-even point in Markham
For the verdict in Markham to flip, electricity would need to drop to about 12.9¢/kWh from 19.06¢, or gas climb past $16.62 per Mcf from $11.25. A utility offering a lower heat pump rate can change this. Until then, no quote price makes a heat pump pay back against gas in Markham; the case for one here rests on comfort, cooling, or replacing electric heat instead.
The other scenario: no gas furnace to begin with
Not every home in Markham 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 $1,539 a year here, a heat pump moving heat rather than generating it needs far less electricity than resistance coils, so the extra $10,000 spent up front comes back in about 6.5 years.
Markham against the rest of the country
Among 3206 cities, Markham's winter puts it at rank 786 for severity, while its size puts it at rank 2928 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 if you live in Markham
Markham, Illinois is home to about 11,290 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 Markham, nothing is lost by holding off until the current equipment genuinely fails.
Get quotes from local HVAC contractors before deciding.
Where Markham's figure comes from
The methodology guide walks through exactly how Markham's 2.57 seasonal COP and the rest of this page's numbers get built. Markham's -5.3°F design temperature falls on the cold side of the 25°F cutoff the cold-climate unit guide walks through.