Should West Des Moines switch to a heat pump?

Here in West Des Moines, the honest answer is that a heat pump raises your annual running cost. $3,500 is what West Des Moines would pay extra to go electric rather than replace the furnace and AC with the same again, once the $2,000 federal credit is applied. Unfortunately the electric bill outweighs the gas bill it replaces by about $70 a year here, so the extra spend stays unrecovered. That's West Des Moines's own climate and rates talking, not a hedge or a caveat.

West Des Moines's weather, in the numbers that matter

Degree days tell the story here: West Des Moines racks up 4972 heating degree days each year (base 65°F), and summers are hot enough that cooling matters as much as heating, with 1291 cooling degree days on the cooling side. Sizing runs off the design temperature, not the average day: -11.9°F here (record low -17°F), which works out to a seasonal COP of 2.41 for the cold-climate class of unit this climate calls for. A cold-climate unit is the right call in West Des Moines — below 25°F design temperature, a standard heat pump leans hard on electric-resistance backup, which erases most of the savings. Source: NOAA station DES MOINES INTERNATIONAL AIRP, 6.7 miles from West Des Moines — the closest one on record.

West Des Moines's running-cost comparison, in dollars

Electricity use for heating alone comes out to about 5,224 kWh a year on the 2000-square-foot reference house; folding in cooling puts the electric bill near $842 a year. The gas furnace it replaces burns roughly 52 Mcf a year at 10.61 per Mcf here, for a running cost near $772 a year (electricity here runs 13.31¢/kWh). 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 $4,546 behind.

If your home heats with electric baseboard instead of gas

Plenty of homes in West Des Moines heat with electricity alone, no gas line involved. Compared with baseboard or electric-furnace resistance heat, the numbers shift in the heat pump’s favor. Switching saves about $1,057 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 7.6 years.

West Des Moines against the rest of the country

West Des Moines lands at position 742 out of 3206 cities on heating severity (coldest is 1), and 521 out of 3206 by population size (biggest is 1). That's the coldest third of the dataset, where climate does most of the work behind this figure.

Next step for 73,664 people in West Des Moines

West Des Moines, Iowa is home to about 73,664 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 West Des Moines, nothing is lost by holding off until the current equipment genuinely fails.

Get quotes from local HVAC contractors before deciding.

Reading further on this page's numbers

The methodology guide walks through exactly how West Des Moines's 2.41 seasonal COP and the rest of this page's numbers get built. West Des Moines's -11.9°F design temperature is below the 25°F line, which is why a cold-climate unit is the right call here — see what that changes in the cold-climate unit guide.