Heat pump vs. gas furnace in Belton, TX
In Belton, the math is close enough that it comes down to how long you plan to stay. $3,500 is what Belton 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. That premium is recovered through $329 of lower running costs every year, landing the payback clock at roughly 10.6 years. It's a genuine toss-up here — Belton's numbers don't point clearly either way.
How cold Belton actually gets
Degree days tell the story here: Belton racks up 1528 heating degree days each year (base 65°F), and summers are severe enough that cooling can dominate the annual bill, with 3080 cooling degree days on the cooling side. 17.1°F is the figure equipment gets sized against here — the 99th-percentile cold snap, not an average day — with a record low of 12.9°F on file. Worked through the model, that's a seasonal COP of 3.11 on the cold-climate unit fit for this climate. Below the 25°F line where a standard machine starts leaning on resistance backup, Belton sits firmly in cold-climate territory, so that's the class of unit priced here. These numbers come from DRAUGHON-MILLER CNTRL TX RGNL, the closest NOAA station, 7.7 miles out.
What it actually costs to run, year to year
A 2000-square-foot house here would pull roughly 1,244 heating kilowatt-hours annually on top of cooling, totalling about $625 a year on electricity. Belton's gas rate of 19.42 per Mcf, applied to the 16 Mcf a year the furnace burns, puts its running cost near $954 a year, against 16.15¢ per kWh for electricity. Looked at as a full purchase rather than an incremental one, payback here is roughly 41.1 years, leaving the 15-year total $1,430 ahead.
The other scenario: no gas furnace to begin with
Plenty of homes in Belton 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. About $644 a year comes back this way, enough that the 12.4-year payback clears the $8,000 premium comfortably within the equipment's life.
Where Belton ranks in this dataset
Among 3206 cities, Belton's winter puts it at rank 2678 for severity, while its size puts it at rank 1567 for population — 1 in both cases being the extreme. That's the mildest third of cities covered, where utility rates carry more of the answer than climate does.
Deciding what's next in Belton, TX
Belton, Texas is home to about 25,635 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 Belton, nothing is lost by holding off until the current equipment genuinely fails.
Ask a local HVAC contractor for a quote before committing either way.
More on how this number was built
Nothing above is a black box: the methodology guide shows the full arithmetic behind Belton's 3.11 seasonal COP and payback figure. Belton's 17.1°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.