Will a heat pump pay off in Cabot, AR?

This one's marginal in Cabot: it only clears if you stay long enough. $3,500 is what Cabot 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 $359 of lower running costs every year, landing the payback clock at roughly 9.8 years. It's a genuine toss-up here — Cabot's numbers don't point clearly either way.

Cabot's weather, in the numbers that matter

2606 heating degree days pile up here every year, so Cabot has a mild winter by US standards; the cooling side runs to 2216 cooling degree days, where summers are hot enough that cooling matters as much as heating. Sizing runs off the design temperature, not the average day: 11.8°F here (record low -2.6°F), which works out to a seasonal COP of 2.98 for the cold-climate class of unit this climate calls for. Cabot needs the cold-climate class of unit: past a 25°F design temperature a standard heat pump falls back on resistance backup often enough to eat the savings. Source: NOAA station LITTLE ROCK AFB AIRPORT, 8 miles from Cabot — the closest one on record.

What it actually costs to run, year to year

Modelled on a typical 2000-square-foot house, the heat pump draws about 2,214 kWh a year to keep it warm, plus cooling, for a combined electric bill near $545 a year. That compares with roughly 27 Mcf a year of gas at Cabot's 19.25 per-Mcf rate — about $904 a year — against a local electricity rate of 13.28¢/kWh. Priced as a standalone purchase rather than against a like-for-like replacement, equipment payback runs about 37.6 years, for a 15-year net position $1,883 ahead.

If your home heats with electric baseboard instead of gas

Not every home in Cabot has gas service. Swap the comparison to resistance heat instead of gas, and Cabot's answer improves. Switching saves about $713 a year here — a heat pump moving heat rather than generating it needs far less electricity than resistance coils — so the extra $8,000 spent up front comes back in about 11.2 years.

Cabot against the rest of the country

Ranked against the other 3206 cities covered, Cabot comes in at 2097 for heating severity — 1 would be the coldest place in the dataset — and 1455 by population, where 1 is largest. That's the middle third for winter severity among the cities covered here.

Deciding what's next in Cabot, AR

Cabot, Arkansas is home to about 27,575 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 Cabot, nothing is lost by holding off until the current equipment genuinely fails.

Line up a few local HVAC quotes before you decide.

More on how this number was built

Nothing above is a black box: the methodology guide shows the full arithmetic behind Cabot's 2.98 seasonal COP and payback figure. Cabot's 11.8°F design temperature falls on the cold side of the 25°F cutoff the cold-climate unit guide walks through.