Heat pump vs. gas furnace in Shiloh, IL

Here in Shiloh, the honest answer is that a heat pump raises your annual running cost. 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). Running costs here land $74 a year HIGHER than the furnace it replaces, so that premium is never recovered. That's Shiloh's own climate and rates talking, not a hedge or a caveat.

Shiloh's weather, in the numbers that matter

3677 heating degree days pile up here every year, so Shiloh has a real but manageable winter; the cooling side runs to 1640 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: 2.5°F here (record low -3.8°F), which works out to a seasonal COP of 2.76 for the cold-climate class of unit this climate calls for. A cold-climate unit is the right call in Shiloh — below 25°F design temperature, a standard heat pump leans hard on electric-resistance backup, which erases most of the savings. Climate figures trace to the nearest NOAA station, SCOTT AIR FORCE BASE/MIDAMERI, 3.5 miles from Shiloh.

What it actually costs to run, year to year

A 2000-square-foot house here would pull roughly 3,373 heating kilowatt-hours annually on top of cooling, totalling about $909 a year on electricity. The gas furnace it replaces burns roughly 38 Mcf a year at 11.25 per Mcf here, for a running cost near $836 a year (electricity here runs 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 $4,604 behind.

Electric resistance heat in Shiloh, compared

Plenty of homes in Shiloh heat with electricity alone, no gas line involved. Against electric-resistance heat — baseboard or an electric furnace, both 100% efficient but still just resistance — the case for switching gets stronger here. About $1,270 a year comes back this way, enough that the 6.3-year payback clears the $8,000 premium comfortably within the equipment's life.

Shiloh against the rest of the country

Ranked against the other 3206 cities covered, Shiloh comes in at 1698 for heating severity — 1 would be the coldest place in the dataset — and 2418 by population, where 1 is largest. That's the middle third for winter severity among the cities covered here.

What to do with this number in Shiloh

Shiloh, Illinois is home to about 14,754 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 Shiloh, nothing is lost by holding off until the current equipment genuinely fails.

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

More on how this number was built

Nothing above is a black box: the methodology guide shows the full arithmetic behind Shiloh's 2.76 seasonal COP and payback figure. Shiloh's 2.5°F design temperature falls on the cold side of the 25°F cutoff the cold-climate unit guide walks through.