Electricity here runs 17.35 cents a kilowatt-hour
Madison County pays more for power than most US counties. A heat pump runs on electricity, so that rate applies to every hour it's heating or cooling your house.
Heat Pump Installation in Granite City, IL
Tell us about the job
Takes about a minute. No obligation.
Step 1 of 3: Equipment
The air stays heavy for months
Dew points here average 66°F through June, July and August. That kind of humidity keeps a system working to pull moisture out of the air, not just cool it, so the unit you install needs to handle both jobs well.
- 7 months
- October through April, your system heats
- 5 months
- May through September, it cools
- 25°F
- the average winter night it heats against
- 86°F
- the average summer afternoon it cools against
Jan
Feb
Mar
Apr
May
Jun
Jul
Aug
Sep
Oct
Nov
Dec
NOAA nClimDiv, 1991–2020 normals
Heat starts getting called on in October here.
A heat pump going in during September beats one going in during a cold snap.
Half the homes here were built in 1971 or earlier, and the heat pump has to work with what's already there
Madison County falls in climate zone 4A, which asks real work of both heating and cooling. Any split-system heat pump manufactured on or after January 1, 2023 has to meet the federal minimum for that work: at least 14.3 Btu of heat moved per watt-hour over the summer, and at least 7.5 Btu per watt-hour over the winter. That floor rules out the weaker units some other regions can still get away with. It also means the unit you're comparing against is already held to a standard built for a place that doesn't get a break in either direction.
Here, an efficient heat pump pays you back on every bill
Electricity here costs more than it does in most places, and a heat pump runs on it all year, through the muggy months and the cold ones. The efficiency rating you pick decides how much of that rate turns into your bill. That difference holds for as long as you own the system.
Find a contractor
Years of running time, on whatever's already in the walls
This is a time card, so the question is what years of running time do to a heat pump installed in an older house. Half the homes in Madison County were built in 1971 or earlier, and a heat pump going into one of them is matched to ductwork and an electrical panel that were sized for whatever system came before, not for this one. Nothing about the home's age says what condition that ductwork or panel is in now. That's the reason to have both checked as part of the install, so the heat pump that runs here for years is sized to what's actually behind the walls.
The old equipment doesn't stay
Whatever is heating and cooling the house now gets disconnected and hauled away as part of the install. A furnace, an old AC condenser, the indoor coil, the refrigerant lines where they're being replaced. Refrigerant gets recovered first, not vented, because that's how it has to be handled. The crew doesn't leave a dead unit sitting in the side yard.
What that means for your install
Pulling the old system is part of the same job as putting in the new one, not a separate trip. It also means whoever quotes the work should be accounting for that time and disposal, not treating it as an extra. If any part of the old setup is staying, like the ductwork or the gas furnace it's pairing with, that gets sorted out before anything is disconnected.
A heat pump's price comes down to more than the box on the pad. Sizing is the first cost driver: a contractor has to work out how much heat the house loses in winter and gains in summer, and that load calculation decides whether you need a smaller or larger unit, not a guess based on square footage. Ductwork is the next one. If the existing ducts are undersized, leaky, or routed badly, they either need rework or the install costs more to get the airflow right, because a heat pump moves a larger volume of air at a lower temperature than a furnace does and it can't push that air through a duct system that was never built for it. The electrical side matters too. Some heat pumps call for a dedicated circuit or a panel upgrade, especially if backup heat strips are part of the system. Beyond the equipment, the labor is the install: setting the outdoor unit, running refrigerant lines, mounting the indoor coil or air handler, and commissioning the system so it's charged correctly. A unit that's charged wrong or sized wrong will run harder and shorter than it should for as long as it's in the house.
Installation day starts with the outdoor unit and the indoor coil or air handler going in on both ends at once, since the crew is usually working as a pair. One sets the outdoor pad and gets the new unit leveled and secured while the other is inside pulling the old coil and setting the new one in the plenum. Refrigerant lines get run and brazed between the two, then pressure tested before anything is charged, because a leak found after the charge means doing that step twice. The line set gets pulled down to a vacuum to clear out moisture and air, and it has to hold that vacuum for a stretch before charging starts, not just hit the number once. Once it's charged, the system gets run through its paces: checking airflow at the registers, checking the temperature split between the air going in and the air coming out, and confirming the thermostat is talking to the system the way it should. Backup heat strips, if the system has them, get tested on their own cycle too, since they only kick in under conditions the rest of the install won't trigger.
