Will a heat pump pay off in Hurst, TX?

This one's marginal in Hurst: it only clears if you stay long enough. 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). Lower bills claw that back: about $348 saved annually, for a payback of roughly 10.1 years. It's a genuine toss-up here — Hurst's numbers don't point clearly either way.

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 (record low 10.9°F), which works out to a seasonal COP of 3.01 for the cold-climate class of unit this climate calls for. Hurst 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. These numbers come from DALLAS/FT WORTH INTERNATIONAL, the closest NOAA station, 10.3 miles out.

The month-to-month numbers for 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 (electricity here runs 16.15¢/kWh). Looked at as a full purchase rather than an incremental one, payback here is roughly 38.8 years, leaving the 15-year total $1,724 ahead.

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 $8,000 spent up front comes back in about 11.5 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 for 39,500 people 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.