Should Mishawaka switch to a heat pump?

Here in Mishawaka, the honest answer is that a heat pump raises your annual running cost. Swap a failed furnace and AC for a heat pump rather than buying like-for-like, and the extra cost here runs $3,500 after a $2,000 federal tax credit. The heat pump would cost about $143 more a year to run than the furnace it replaces — a premium with no payback. There's no spin on that: Mishawaka's numbers say wait.

Why Mishawaka's climate drives this number

Mishawaka has a real but manageable winter — 4978 heating degree days a year against a 65°F base — and summers add a moderate cooling load, at 948 cooling degree days. Sizing runs off the design temperature, not the average day: -2°F here (record low -9°F), which works out to a seasonal COP of 2.65 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, Mishawaka sits firmly in cold-climate territory, so that's the class of unit priced here. These numbers come from SOUTH BEND REGIONAL AIRPORT, the closest NOAA station, 8.1 miles out.

The month-to-month numbers for Mishawaka

A 2000-square-foot house here would pull roughly 4,757 heating kilowatt-hours annually on top of cooling, totalling about $948 a year on electricity. That compares with roughly 52 Mcf a year of gas at Mishawaka's 11.49 per-Mcf rate — about $805 a year — against a local electricity rate of 17.03¢/kWh. Priced as a standalone purchase rather than against a like-for-like replacement, equipment payback runs past the 15-year equipment life, for a 15-year net position $5,642 behind.

The other scenario: no gas furnace to begin with

Gas isn't universal in Mishawaka — 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. The saving here runs about $1,408 a year, which recovers the extra $8,000 spent going electric in roughly 5.7 years.

Mishawaka against the rest of the country

Among 3206 cities, Mishawaka's winter puts it at rank 736 for severity, while its size puts it at rank 800 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 for 51,020 people in Mishawaka

About 51,020 people live in Mishawaka, Indiana, 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.

Reading further on this page's numbers

Nothing above is a black box: the methodology guide shows the full arithmetic behind Mishawaka's 2.65 seasonal COP and payback figure. At a -2°F design temperature, Mishawaka sits in cold-climate territory; the guide to that class of unit explains why.