Illinois Heating

Heat pump vs furnace in Bureau County, Illinois

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Which costs less to run in Bureau County?

An outdoor air conditioning condenser unit on a concrete pad beside a dark horizontal-sided wall, with a conduit and electrical disconnect box above it, photographed at night.

Heat pump

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

A beige sheet-metal furnace stands on a concrete floor against a dark blue painted wall, with a metal flue pipe and a white PVC pipe rising from its top.

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?

  • Steady, even comfort

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

    A golden retriever sleeps on a braided gray rug beside a navy upholstered armchair holding an open book, with a lit floor lamp, side table with mug, curtained window showing frost-covered branches at dusk, and a stone fireplace with built-in blue shelves.

  • 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.

    A living room with navy blue walls and built-in shelving, a beige sectional sofa with blue and gray pillows and a knit throw, a wooden coffee table with a woven tray and glass vase of greenery, a leather ottoman, and a large window looking onto green shrubs and hydrangeas.

  • No gas line, nothing burning in the house

    A heat pump runs on electricity alone. Nothing burns inside the house.

    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.

Where does a furnace shine?

  • Strong, steady heat in hard cold

    Winter nights here average 18°F, and a furnace pushes out hot air from the first cycle through the coldest stretch without losing ground. You get the same strong heat at midnight in January as you do on a mild afternoon.

    A dark navy two-story house with white trim, dormer windows and a covered porch, its windows glowing yellow at dusk, with a shoveled path through deep snow leading to the steps and a lit lamp post at right.

  • Runs on the gas most homes here already use

    Most homes in Bureau County already have gas line in place, 68.4% of them heat with it. If yours is one of them, a gas furnace just hooks into what's already there.

    A row of closely spaced two-story houses along a sidewalk with patchy snow, the nearest with concrete steps and dark blue wooden railings and a gas meter at the foundation.

  • Fast, strong heat on demand

    Turn the heat up and the furnace answers right away. There's no long wait for the house to catch up.

    An entryway with a dark blue door and snowy trees outside, snow-dusted winter boots and smaller boots on a patterned rug, a floor vent, a sheer blue curtain, a white bench with a wicker basket, a fringed plaid throw, a steaming mug, and coats hanging on the wall.

What the cold does to a heat pump here

Winter nights in Bureau County average 18°F, and that number matters more than any spec sheet. A standard heat pump starts losing heating capacity below 40°F and often needs backup heat below about 35°F. Here, every single night that drops to freezing or below, about 130 of them a year, falls under both marks. This isn't an occasional dip into hard territory. It's most of the heating season.

That doesn't mean a heat pump quits. ENERGY STAR Cold Climate models are built and tested to keep making heat down into single digits, holding onto most of their capacity at 5°F. Field tests of these units found that backup heat carried only a small part of the load even between 0°F and 35°F, and running on backup alone was rare unless it dropped below 0°F. That only happens about 10 nights a year here. So the cold climate version holds up through nearly all of what this county sees.

A standard heat pump, the kind built to the federal minimum, is a different case. With 130 nights a year below freezing, it would lean on backup heat through a good part of every winter. If you're looking at a heat pump for this house, the cold climate rating is the detail that decides whether it can actually do the job here.

A two-story dark blue clapboard house with white trim, shutters, and a light blue front door, fronted by a snow-covered yard, a cleared concrete walkway, a mailbox on a post, and bare trees under an overcast sky.

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

Run the numbers at Illinois's own prices and gas wins. A furnace built to the federal minimum makes the same heat for $1.33 per 100,000 Btu against $2.12 for a heat pump built to its federal minimum, with nothing added for backup heat on the coldest nights. That gap holds for all eight months heat runs here, October through May.

It also lines up with what's already installed. Utility gas heats 68.4% of homes in Bureau County, about two in three. Add the 14.5% on propane, and most houses here already have a gas line and a gas-burning appliance in them. A furnace uses that. A heat pump replaces it, which means no gas line, nothing burning in the house, but it also means taking on a system this county's homes mostly don't already have.

The furnace's downside is the one furnaces always have: it only heats. For the three months cooling runs here, June through August, it sits idle while something else does the work. A heat pump runs both sides, which is the real case for it here, not the cold, but the summer it also has to cover. Whether that's worth more than the lower gas running cost is the actual choice in this county, and it comes down to what the house already has running through it, and whether you want one system instead of two.

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

A two-story navy blue house with white trim, a columned front porch and light blue door, fronted by a snow-covered lawn and cleared walkway, with bare trees and neighboring houses on either side.

Common questions about heat pumps and furnaces

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

    A standard heat pump can heat through a winter here, but its output falls below its rating once it's under 40°F, and the average overnight low across December, January and February is 18°F. On the coldest nights, the roughly 10 a year that reach 0°F or below, it's putting out only a fraction of what it's rated for.

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

    Most homeowners here pair a heat pump with backup heat. A standard heat pump often needs it below about 35°F, and over half the nights in the 8 months the heat runs here, about 130 of them, drop to 32°F or below. An ENERGY STAR Cold Climate model holds up better in the cold, so the answer depends on which heat pump is being considered.

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

    Yes, and here that often means the furnace runs as backup heat. A heat pump built to the federal minimum often needs backup once it drops below about 35°F outside, and the overnight low here averages 18°F across December, January and February, so the furnace would have real work to do on cold nights.

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

    No, a furnace costs less to run here. Gas runs $1.33 per 100,000 Btu of heat against $2.12 for a heat pump, both at Illinois's average fuel prices and each machine built to the federal minimum. That's Illinois's gas price working in the furnace's favor as much as the furnace itself.

A person's arm in a dark blue shirt reaches to adjust a round wall-mounted thermostat on a pale blue wall, with a living room containing a leather sofa, lamp and coffee table behind, and an open tool bag on the wood floor below.

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