Should Harrison switch to a heat pump?
In Harrison, the extra upfront cost technically comes back, just not before the equipment wears out. Against a like-for-like gas furnace and AC swap, going electric costs $3,500 more up front here (already netting out a $2,000 tax credit). Harrison's residents would see roughly $26 a year back in running costs, putting the payback around 132.3 years. Harrison's own numbers say this pencils out only in theory, not in practice.
Why Harrison's climate drives this number
Harrison has a real but manageable winter — 3982 heating degree days a year against a 65°F base — and summers are hot enough that cooling matters as much as heating, at 1348 cooling degree days. 5°F is the figure equipment gets sized against here — the 99th-percentile cold snap, not an average day — with a record low of -2.9°F on file. Worked through the model, that's a seasonal COP of 2.82 on the cold-climate unit fit for this climate. Below the 25°F line where a standard machine starts leaning on resistance backup, Harrison sits firmly in cold-climate territory, so that's the class of unit priced here. Climate figures trace to the nearest NOAA station, BUTLER CO. REGIONAL ARPT, 15.8 miles from Harrison.
The month-to-month numbers for Harrison
Electricity use for heating alone comes out to about 3,576 kWh a year on the 2000-square-foot reference house; folding in cooling puts the electric bill near $869 a year. Harrison's gas rate of 13.85 per Mcf, applied to the 41 Mcf a year the furnace burns, puts its running cost near $896 a year, against 18.40¢ per kWh for electricity. Buy it outright, not incrementally, and payback stretches to 510.4 years; over 15 years the net position sits $3,103 behind.
Electric resistance heat in Harrison, compared
Not every home in Harrison has gas service. Swap the comparison to resistance heat instead of gas, and Harrison's answer improves. The saving here runs about $1,307 a year, which recovers the extra $8,000 spent going electric in roughly 6.1 years.
Where Harrison ranks in this dataset
Harrison lands at position 1541 out of 3206 cities on heating severity (coldest is 1), and 2582 out of 3206 by population size (biggest is 1). That's the middle third for winter severity among the cities covered here.
Next step for 13,526 people in Harrison
About 13,526 people live in Harrison, Ohio, and every number on this page is what a contractor would actually work from when quoting a system here — the point isn't to replace that quote, it's to tell you whether to bother asking for one. Here, there's no cost penalty to waiting until your current furnace or AC actually needs replacing.
Ask a local HVAC contractor for a quote before committing either way.
More on how this number was built
The methodology guide walks through exactly how Harrison's 2.82 seasonal COP and the rest of this page's numbers get built. Harrison's 5°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.