Should Medina switch to a heat pump?
In Medina, a heat pump would cost more to run each year than what you have now. 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). Unfortunately the electric bill outweighs the gas bill it replaces by about $44 a year here, so the extra spend stays unrecovered. There's no spin on that: Medina's numbers say wait.
The climate behind Medina's payback figure
4871 heating degree days pile up here every year, so Medina has a real but manageable winter; the cooling side runs to 886 cooling degree days, where summers add a moderate cooling load. The 99% winter design temperature here — the cold snap equipment must be sized for, not the seasonal average — is 3°F, against a record low of 1.9°F. That puts the seasonal coefficient of performance at 2.77 for the recommended cold-climate unit. Below the 25°F line where a standard machine starts leaning on resistance backup, Medina sits firmly in cold-climate territory, so that's the class of unit priced here. Climate figures trace to the nearest NOAA station, WAYNE COUNTY AIRPORT, 18.1 miles from Medina.
The month-to-month numbers for Medina
A 2000-square-foot house here would pull roughly 4,453 heating kilowatt-hours annually on top of cooling, totalling about $958 a year on electricity. Medina's gas rate of 13.85 per Mcf, applied to the 51 Mcf a year the furnace burns, puts its running cost near $914 a year, against 18.40¢ per kWh for electricity. Buy it outright, not incrementally, and payback stretches to beyond the 15-year equipment life; over 15 years the net position sits $4,166 behind.
Electric resistance heat in Medina, compared
Plenty of homes in Medina heat with electricity alone, no gas line involved. Swap the comparison to resistance heat instead of gas, and Medina's answer improves. About $1,522 a year comes back this way, enough that the 5.3-year payback clears the $8,000 premium comfortably within the equipment's life.
Where Medina ranks in this dataset
Medina lands at position 879 out of 3206 cities on heating severity (coldest is 1), and 1559 out of 3206 by population size (biggest is 1). That's the coldest third of the dataset, where climate does most of the work behind this figure.
Deciding what's next in Medina, OH
About 25,757 people live in Medina, Ohio, 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.
Ask a local HVAC contractor for a quote before committing either way.
Where Medina's figure comes from
Nothing above is a black box: the methodology guide shows the full arithmetic behind Medina's 2.77 seasonal COP and payback figure. Medina's 3°F design temperature falls on the cold side of the 25°F cutoff the cold-climate unit guide walks through.