Marshall, TX: the heat pump payback math
Marshall sits right on the fence — how long you'll own the house decides this one. $3,500 is what Marshall 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 $304 saved annually, for a payback of roughly 11.5 years. It's a genuine toss-up here — Marshall's numbers don't point clearly either way.
Marshall's weather, in the numbers that matter
1826 heating degree days pile up here every year, so Marshall has a mild winter by US standards; the cooling side runs to 2393 cooling degree days, where summers are hot enough that cooling matters as much as heating. The 99% winter design temperature here — the cold snap equipment must be sized for, not the seasonal average — is 19.2°F, against a record low of 9°F. That puts the seasonal coefficient of performance at 3.16 for the recommended cold-climate unit. A cold-climate unit is the right call in Marshall — below 25°F design temperature, a standard heat pump leans hard on electric-resistance backup, which erases most of the savings. These numbers come from HARRISON COUNTY AIRPORT, the closest NOAA station, 2.9 miles out.
Marshall's running-cost comparison, in dollars
A 2000-square-foot house here would pull roughly 1,463 heating kilowatt-hours annually on top of cooling, totalling about $566 a year on electricity. That compares with roughly 19 Mcf a year of gas at Marshall's 19.42 per-Mcf rate — about $870 a year — against a local electricity rate of 16.15¢/kWh. Looked at as a full purchase rather than an incremental one, payback here is roughly 44.4 years, leaving the 15-year total $1,065 ahead.
If your home heats with electric baseboard instead of gas
Gas isn't universal in Marshall — many houses run on electric heat already. Swap the comparison to resistance heat instead of gas, and Marshall's answer improves. About $682 a year comes back this way, enough that the 11.7-year payback clears the $8,000 premium comfortably within the equipment's life.
How Marshall compares nationally
Marshall lands at position 2528 out of 3206 cities on heating severity (coldest is 1), and 1650 out of 3206 by population size (biggest is 1). That's the mildest third of cities covered, where utility rates carry more of the answer than climate does.
Deciding what's next in Marshall, TX
Marshall, Texas is home to about 24,263 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 Marshall, nothing is lost by holding off until the current equipment genuinely fails.
Line up a few local HVAC quotes before you decide.
More on how this number was built
Every constant behind this page — the 3.16 seasonal COP, the degree-day corrections, the equipment costs — is documented in the methodology guide. Marshall's 19.2°F design temperature falls on the cold side of the 25°F cutoff the cold-climate unit guide walks through.