Illinois Heating

Heat pump vs furnace in Champaign County, Illinois

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Pros who install both

Which costs less to run in Champaign County?

An outdoor air conditioning condenser unit on a concrete pad beside a dark blue horizontal-lap sided wall at night, with a wall-mounted disconnect box and insulated refrigerant lines running to the unit.

Heat pump

To heat your home here$2.12per 100,000 Btu

A beige sheet-metal furnace with ducting and a metal flue stands in a basement corner with dark blue painted walls, a concrete floor, and a bare hanging light bulb overhead.

Furnace

To heat your home here$1.33per 100,000 Btu

At Illinois's gas and electricity prices, a gas furnace makes the same heat as a heat pump for at least 37% less.

Btu stands for British thermal unit, the standard measure of heat energy.

Where does a heat pump shine?

  • No gas line, nothing burning in the house

    It moves heat instead of making it from fire. That means no combustion, no flue and no gas bill for heat.

    A kitchen with navy blue shaker cabinets, white subway tile backsplash, light stone countertops, a stainless range hood over a cooktop with a pale blue kettle, and an island holding a vase of white hydrangeas and a bowl of green apples with wooden stools.

  • Steady, even comfort

    A heat pump runs long and low instead of blasting on and off. Rooms hold an even temperature all day.

    A light-colored dog sleeps on a woven rug in a dimly lit living room with a navy armchair holding an open book and a knit blanket, a lit floor lamp, built-in shelves, and a window showing snow-covered trees at dusk.

  • Heats and cools in one system

    One machine handles the heat in winter and the cooling in summer. There's no second system to buy or keep up.

    A living room with a beige sofa holding navy and light blue cushions and a dark knit throw, a wooden coffee table with a bowl, books and a mug, a jute rug, wooden sideboard with a lamp and plants, and a large window with linen curtains showing green garden foliage.

Where does a furnace shine?

  • Runs on the gas most homes here already use

    More than half the homes in Champaign County already heat with gas, so the line running to your house is likely already there. A furnace just uses what's already in place.

    A row of wood-sided houses with covered porches, concrete steps and metal railings along a snow-covered sidewalk in winter sunlight.

  • Proven, simple, easy to get serviced

    Parts are easy to find and most repairs are routine. Getting one fixed rarely means waiting on a specialist.

    A gloved hand holds a white pleated air filter in front of a furnace and ductwork, next to wooden shelves holding bins, folded blankets, and a blue mug.

  • Fast, strong heat on demand

    The air coming from the vents feels genuinely hot. That's welcome on a freezing morning.

    Entryway with coats hung above a wooden bench holding mittens and a steaming mug, boots on a tile floor, a jute mat, a floor vent with visible warm air, a sheer curtain blowing by a window showing snow, and a dark blue door.

What winter here does to a heat pump

Your furnace or heat pump here runs eight months a year, October through May, longer than it runs idle. That's the season this decision has to hold up over, not just the cold snaps. The average overnight low across December, January and February is 21°F, and about 120 nights a year dip to freezing or below. Six of those nights hit 0°F.

A standard heat pump starts losing ground before it gets anywhere near that cold. Below 40°F its heat output drops under its rating. Below about 35°F it typically needs backup heat to make up the difference. Your winter low of 21°F sits under both marks, and every single one of those 120 freezing nights does too. This isn't a problem on the worst night of the year. It's the normal pattern for about half the nights heat runs here.

A heat pump built to carry the ENERGY STAR Cold Climate label is a different machine. To earn that label it has to deliver at least 1.75 units of heat per unit of electricity at 5°F, and hold onto 70 percent of its 47°F capacity at that same temperature, checked by independent testing. Field tests on prototype cold-climate units back this up in practice: over two winters in occupied homes, backup heat covered only a small share of the output between 0°F and 35°F, and the unit running on backup alone was rare even above 0°F. If a heat pump is the choice, the difference between a standard model and a cold-climate one is the difference between a machine that struggles here and one that doesn't.

A row of two-story houses with brick lower walls, white porches and blue or light blue siding, behind deep snowbanks along a cleared sidewalk under a clear sky with bare trees.

What each one costs to run, and what's already in the house

Run the two side by side at Illinois's own fuel prices and the furnace wins on cost. A gas furnace makes the same 100,000 Btu of heat for $1.33. A heat pump makes it for $2.12, and that figure already assumes no backup heat ran on the cold nights. Gas furnace, cheaper to run, in a county where heat runs eight months and the lows favor it.

Cost isn't the only thing worth weighing. A heat pump also cools your house, so it replaces two systems with one. A furnace only heats. For the four months a year cooling runs here, June through September, a furnace sits there doing nothing, and a separate air conditioner has to carry that load.

What's already running your neighbors' houses points toward gas too. Utility gas heats 54.2% of homes in Champaign County, a little over half, and electricity heats 40.6%, about two in five. If your house already has a gas line and ductwork sized for a furnace, staying with gas is the simpler path. If it doesn't, or if having one system instead of two matters more to you than the running cost, a cold-climate heat pump is built for exactly the winters this county has.

Sources: NOAA nClimDiv · NOAA 1991–2020 seasonal normals · PNNL Building America guide · PNNL-37127 field study · ENERGY STAR product criteria · EIA SEDS 2024 · 10 CFR 430.32 · Census ACS 2020–2024

A row of two-story houses with brick and blue siding facades, covered porches and icicles along the eaves, beside a plowed street with snowbanks under a clear blue sky.

Common questions about heat pumps and furnaces

  • Can a heat pump heat a house through an Illinois winter?

    It can, but not alone on the coldest nights. A standard heat pump's output falls short of its rating below 40°F and keeps dropping as temperatures fall into the teens, and the overnight low here averages 21°F across December through February. About 6 nights a year reach 0°F or below, which is where a heat pump needs backup heat the most, but field testing on cold-climate models found backup supplied only a small share of the heat between 0°F and 35°F, and running on backup alone was rare above 0°F.

  • Do I need backup heat with a heat pump here?

    Most houses here need it. The overnight low averages 21°F across December, January and February, well below the 35°F mark where a standard heat pump's heating efficiency drops, and below the 40°F mark where its output starts falling short of the rating. About 120 nights a year here sit at or below freezing, so that's not a rare cold snap, it's a big share of the winter.

  • Can I keep my furnace and add a heat pump?

    Yes, and here that pairing earns its keep. The heat pump carries the house through the roughly 120 nights a year that stay at or above freezing, then the furnace takes over once it drops below, since a standard heat pump's output falls short of its rating below 40°F and often needs backup below about 35°F. Your furnace already runs on the gas most homes in the county use, so it's a natural second stage rather than a new system.

  • Is a heat pump cheaper to run than a furnace in Champaign County?

    No, a gas furnace costs less to run here. A furnace makes the same heat for $1.33 per 100,000 Btu against $2.12 for a heat pump, both built to the federal minimum, so the furnace runs at least 37% cheaper at Illinois's current gas and electricity prices. That gap comes from the price of the fuel itself, gas at $10.64 per million Btu against electricity at $46.51.

A person's arm in a light blue shirt reaches to adjust a round thermostat on a dark blue wall above a light switch plate, with a tool bag in the foreground and a living room visible through a doorway.

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