Illinois Heating

Heat pump vs furnace in Will County, Illinois

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Installers who work in Will County

Which costs less to run in Will County?

A gray outdoor condenser unit on a concrete pad beside a dark blue horizontal-lap sided wall at night, lit by a wall-mounted light above, with an electrical disconnect box on the wall behind it.

Heat pump

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

A beige furnace with a louvered upper panel stands against a dark blue painted block wall in a basement, with a metal flue pipe rising from its top, flexible conduit and copper gas piping at its side, and a bare light bulb glowing 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?

  • Heats and cools in one system

    A heat pump runs the same way all year. It pulls heat into the house in winter and pushes it out in summer.

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  • 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 cabinets, white marble-look counters and backsplash, a stainless range hood over an induction cooktop with a kettle, a wall oven with a striped towel, utensils, cutting boards, potted plants, a bowl of green apples and blue hydrangeas in the foreground.

  • Steady, even comfort

    Instead of short bursts of heat, it keeps a gentle, steady output going. The house stays at one comfortable temperature.

    A dimly lit living room with a light blue armchair holding an open book and a navy knit throw, beside a lit table lamp, a navy built-in bookshelf, a fireplace with candles on the mantel, a snow-covered view through a window, and a light-colored dog curled asleep on a woven rug.

Where does a furnace shine?

  • Strong, steady heat in hard cold

    Overnight lows in Will County average 20°F through December, January and February. A furnace burns gas to make heat, so it puts out the same strong heat on those cold nights without straining to keep up.

    A dark navy clapboard house with a snow-covered roof and lit windows at dusk, with a shoveled path, a lantern in the snow, and snow-laden evergreen and bare trees around it.

  • Runs on the gas most homes here already use

    Almost 9 out of 10 homes in Will County already heat with gas. If yours is one of them, the gas line a furnace needs is already run to the house.

    A row of wood-sided houses along a snowy sidewalk, with concrete front steps, metal handrails, and an exterior gas meter with pipes mounted on a light blue clapboard wall.

  • Pairs with any central AC

    A furnace's blower and ducts carry cooled air too. Adding central AC uses the same system.

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What the cold actually does here

Winter here is long and it bites. Heat runs eight months a year, October through May, and the overnight low averages 20°F across December, January and February. That's below the point where a standard heat pump starts losing ground. Below 40°F a standard heat pump puts out less than its rated capacity. Below about 35°F it often needs backup heat to make up the difference. Will County's average winter night is under both marks, and every single night that falls to freezing or below, about 125 of them a year, is under both marks too.

That doesn't mean a heat pump can't heat your house. It means a standard one is working at a disadvantage on more than half the nights of the heating season. A heat pump built to the ENERGY STAR Cold Climate spec is a different machine: it has to deliver real heat at 5°F and hold onto most of its 47°F capacity at that temperature, and that's checked by independent testing, not just claimed on a spec sheet. Field testing on prototype cold-climate heat pumps backs this up. Over two winters of real homes, backup heat covered only a small share of the heat needed between 0°F and 35°F, and running on backup alone was rare even above 0°F. So the real question for your house isn't heat pump versus furnace in the abstract. It's whether the heat pump you're pricing is a standard one or a cold-climate one, because here, that difference matters more than it would somewhere milder.

The 0°F nights are the part worth sizing correctly, and they're the smaller part of the problem. Will County sees about 8 of them a year. That's real cold, but it's a short list next to the 125 nights at or below freezing. A furnace doesn't notice the difference between 20°F and 0°F. A heat pump does, which is exactly why the backup heat source matters more than the brand or the ductwork.

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What it costs to run, and what's already in the wall

Run the numbers Illinois actually charges and a furnace is cheaper to operate: $1.33 per 100,000 Btu against $2.12 for a heat pump, built to federal minimums on both sides. That's a furnace running at least 37% cheaper to make the same heat. A heat pump earns that gap back, or more, by also doing your cooling, so the honest comparison isn't heating cost alone, it's heating cost plus what you'd otherwise spend on central air for the three months of summer here, June through August.

Look at what's already running these homes. Utility gas heats 87.9% of them, close to nine in ten. Electric heat is the setup in about one in ten. That's not a reason to rule a heat pump out, but if your house is one of the nine in ten with a gas line already in, a furnace uses infrastructure that's already paid for and already sized to the house. Putting in a heat pump there means adding a cold-climate unit and a backup heat source, not swapping one box for another.

So the choice here comes down to what you're optimizing for. If it's the lowest cost to heat the house, a gas furnace wins outright, and it pairs with whatever central AC you already have or add. If you want one system that heats and cools and you're ready to pay more to run it, a heat pump can do the job through a Will County winter, but only the cold-climate kind, with backup heat sized for the cold, not a standard unit asked to do more than it's rated for.

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

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Common questions about heat pumps and furnaces

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

    Yes, but not at full strength on the coldest nights. A standard heat pump puts out less than its rated heat once it's below 40°F outside, and Will County sees about 125 nights a year at or below freezing. That's why most installations here pair the heat pump with a backup heat source for those nights rather than asking it to carry the house alone.

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

    Most homeowners here add it. A standard heat pump's efficiency drops below about 35°F outside, and the average overnight low across December, January and February in Will County is 20°F, well past that mark. Cold climate models hold more of their capacity in the cold, but with roughly 125 nights a year at or below freezing, backup heat is the common setup here.

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

    Yes, and in Will County it's called a dual fuel system. The heat pump does the work on milder days, and the furnace takes over once it's too cold for the heat pump to keep up or run efficiently. Your gas line and ductwork already in the house are what let the two share the job.

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

    No, a gas furnace costs less to run here. At Illinois's average prices, 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. That's because natural gas runs cheaper here than electricity per unit of heat delivered, and it's also why utility gas heats nearly nine in ten homes in the county.

A person in a light blue shirt adjusts a round white thermostat on a blue wall, with a living room containing a sofa, coffee table, rug and fireplace visible through a doorway and a tool bag on the wood floor.

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