McHenry, IL: the heat pump payback math
In McHenry, 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). The heat pump would cost about $269 more a year to run than the furnace it replaces — a premium with no payback. There's no spin on that: McHenry's numbers say wait.
Why McHenry's climate drives this number
5324 heating degree days pile up here every year, so McHenry has a cold winter that leans hard on heating equipment; the cooling side runs to 777 cooling degree days, where summers add a moderate cooling load. Sizing runs off the design temperature, not the average day: -0.9°F here (record low -11°F), which works out to a seasonal COP of 2.68 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, McHenry sits firmly in cold-climate territory, so that's the class of unit priced here. These numbers come from WAUKEGAN REGIONAL AIRPORT, the closest NOAA station, 22.4 miles out.
What it actually costs to run, year to year
A 2000-square-foot house here would pull roughly 5,030 heating kilowatt-hours annually on top of cooling, totalling about $1,085 a year on electricity. That compares with roughly 55 Mcf a year of gas at McHenry's 11.25 per-Mcf rate — about $816 a year — against a local electricity rate of 19.06¢/kWh. Buy it outright, not incrementally, and payback stretches to beyond the 15-year equipment life; over 15 years the net position sits $7,540 behind.
If your home heats with electric baseboard instead of gas
Gas isn't universal in McHenry — many houses run on electric heat already. 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 $1,676 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 4.8 years.
McHenry against the rest of the country
Among 3206 cities, McHenry's winter puts it at rank 464 for severity, while its size puts it at rank 1391 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.
What to do with this number in McHenry
About 28,825 people live in McHenry, 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.
Get quotes from local HVAC contractors before deciding.
Where McHenry's figure comes from
Every constant behind this page — the 2.68 seasonal COP, the degree-day corrections, the equipment costs — is documented in the methodology guide. McHenry's -0.9°F design temperature falls on the cold side of the 25°F cutoff the cold-climate unit guide walks through.