Is a heat pump worth it in Hot Springs?
This one's marginal in Hot Springs: it only clears if you stay long enough. $3,500 is what Hot Springs 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. Hot Springs's residents would see roughly $353 a year back in running costs, putting the payback around 9.9 years. Whether that's worth it in Hot Springs depends on how many years you expect to own the place.
Why Hot Springs's climate drives this number
2367 heating degree days pile up here every year, so Hot Springs has a mild winter by US standards; the cooling side runs to 2389 cooling degree days, where summers are hot enough that cooling matters as much as heating. 14°F is the figure equipment gets sized against here — the 99th-percentile cold snap, not an average day — with a record low of 5°F on file. Worked through the model, that's a seasonal COP of 3.04 on the cold-climate unit fit for this climate. Hot Springs 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. Climate figures trace to the nearest NOAA station, MEMORIAL FIELD AIRPORT, 13.8 miles from Hot Springs.
What it actually costs to run, year to year
A 2000-square-foot house here would pull roughly 1,972 heating kilowatt-hours annually on top of cooling, totalling about $532 a year on electricity. That compares with roughly 25 Mcf a year of gas at Hot Springs's 19.25 per-Mcf rate — about $886 a year — against a local electricity rate of 13.28¢/kWh. Looked at as a full purchase rather than an incremental one, payback here is roughly 38.2 years, leaving the 15-year total $1,801 ahead.
If your home heats with electric baseboard instead of gas
Plenty of homes in Hot Springs heat with electricity alone, no gas line involved. Swap the comparison to resistance heat instead of gas, and Hot Springs's answer improves. Switching saves about $675 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 11.9 years.
Hot Springs against the rest of the country
Among 3206 cities, Hot Springs's winter puts it at rank 2248 for severity, while its size puts it at rank 1093 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.
What to do with this number in Hot Springs
About 37,971 people live in Hot Springs, Arkansas, 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.
Line up a few local HVAC quotes before you decide.
Where Hot Springs's figure comes from
The methodology guide walks through exactly how Hot Springs's 3.04 seasonal COP and the rest of this page's numbers get built. At a 14°F design temperature, Hot Springs sits in cold-climate territory; the guide to that class of unit explains why.