Heat Pump Payback in Hurst, TX
Will a heat pump pay off in Hurst, TX?
The payback math works in Hurst on paper, past the equipment's own working life. Against a like-for-like gas furnace and AC swap, going electric costs $5,500 more up front here. Lower bills claw that back: about $348 saved annually, for a payback of roughly 15.8 years. That's a technicality, not a recommendation, for anyone actually living in Hurst.
Checking a different city
Hurst is one of 3206 cities covered here, each run through the same model. Search another below.
Hurst's weather, in the numbers that matter
1667 heating degree days pile up here every year, so Hurst has a mild winter by US standards; the cooling side runs to 3318 cooling degree days, where summers are severe enough that cooling can dominate the annual bill. Sizing runs off the design temperature, not the average day: 12.9°F here (coldest 2024 reading 10.9°F), which works out to a seasonal COP of 3.01 for the cold-climate class of unit this climate calls for. Mild on average, but the occasional cold snap is what sizes the equipment: at a 12.9°F design temperature Hurst falls just under the 25°F line where a standard heat pump starts leaning on resistance backup, so the model prices a cold-climate unit to be safe. These numbers come from Dallas/Ft Worth International, the closest NOAA station, 10.3 miles out.
The yearly running costs in Hurst
Electricity use for heating alone comes out to about 1,402 kWh a year on the 2000-square-foot reference house; folding in cooling puts the electric bill near $683 a year. The gas furnace it replaces burns roughly 17 Mcf a year at $19.42 per Mcf here, for a running cost near $1,032 a year including the old AC (electricity here runs 16.15¢/kWh). If the current system still worked and you replaced it anyway, the full cost would take longer than the 15-year equipment life to earn back; against buying a new furnace and AC regardless, the 15-year total lands $276 behind.
The break-even point in Hurst
In Hurst the cooling savings outweigh the extra electricity for heating, so no plausible change in the electricity rate would make the old furnace and AC cheaper to run. A useful quote test for Hurst: the heat pump is worth it within a decade if it costs less than $3,480 more than replacing the furnace and AC, and within 7 years if the gap is under $2,436.
If your home heats with electric baseboard instead of gas
Plenty of homes in Hurst 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. Switching saves about $693 a year here, a heat pump moving heat rather than generating it needs far less electricity than resistance coils, so the extra $10,000 spent up front comes back in about 14.4 years.
Where Hurst ranks in this dataset
Ranked against the other 3206 cities covered, Hurst comes in at 2614 for heating severity, 1 would be the coldest place in the dataset, and 1047 by population, where 1 is largest. That's the mildest third of cities covered, where utility rates carry more of the answer than climate does.
Next step if you live in Hurst
Hurst, Texas is home to about 39,500 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 Hurst, nothing is lost by holding off until the current equipment genuinely fails.
Line up a few local HVAC quotes before you decide.
Reading further on this page's numbers
Every constant behind this page, the 3.01 seasonal COP, the degree-day corrections, the equipment costs, is documented in the methodology guide. At a 12.9°F design temperature, Hurst sits in cold-climate territory; the guide to that class of unit explains why.