Heat pump vs. gas furnace in Hewitt, TX
This one's marginal in Hewitt: it only clears if you stay long enough. $3,500 is what Hewitt 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. Lower bills claw that back: about $333 saved annually, for a payback of roughly 10.5 years. Whether that's worth it in Hewitt depends on how many years you expect to own the place.
Why Hewitt's climate drives this number
1563 heating degree days pile up here every year, so Hewitt has a mild winter by US standards; the cooling side runs to 3138 cooling degree days, where summers are severe enough that cooling can dominate the annual bill. 16°F is the figure equipment gets sized against here — the 99th-percentile cold snap, not an average day — with a record low of 12°F on file. Worked through the model, that's a seasonal COP of 3.08 on the cold-climate unit fit for this climate. Hewitt 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 MC GREGOR EXECUTIVE ARPT, 7.6 miles from Hewitt — the closest one on record.
The month-to-month numbers for Hewitt
Electricity use for heating alone comes out to about 1,285 kWh a year on the 2000-square-foot reference house; folding in cooling puts the electric bill near $640 a year. The gas furnace it replaces burns roughly 16 Mcf a year at 19.42 per Mcf here, for a running cost near $973 a year (electricity here runs 16.15¢/kWh). Priced as a standalone purchase rather than against a like-for-like replacement, equipment payback runs about 40.5 years, for a 15-year net position $1,499 ahead.
If your home heats with electric baseboard instead of gas
Plenty of homes in Hewitt heat with electricity alone, no gas line involved. Swap the comparison to resistance heat instead of gas, and Hewitt's answer improves. The saving here runs about $656 a year, which recovers the extra $8,000 spent going electric in roughly 12.2 years.
How Hewitt compares nationally
Among 3206 cities, Hewitt's winter puts it at rank 2664 for severity, while its size puts it at rank 2219 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.
Next step for 16,749 people in Hewitt
About 16,749 people live in Hewitt, Texas, 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.
Get quotes from local HVAC contractors before deciding.
Reading further on this page's numbers
The methodology guide walks through exactly how Hewitt's 3.08 seasonal COP and the rest of this page's numbers get built. At a 16°F design temperature, Hewitt sits in cold-climate territory; the guide to that class of unit explains why.