Heat Pump Payback in Seabrook, TX
Should Seabrook switch to a heat pump?
Seabrook sits right on the fence, how long you'll own the house decides this one. Swap a failed furnace and AC for a heat pump rather than buying like-for-like, and the extra cost here runs $3,000. Seabrook's residents would see roughly $300 a year back in running costs, putting the payback around 10 years. It's a genuine toss-up here, Seabrook's numbers don't point clearly either way.
Compare against another city
This runs the same numbers for 3206 US cities, not just Seabrook. Look one up here.
Seabrook's weather, in the numbers that matter
Degree days tell the story here: Seabrook racks up 853 heating degree days each year (base 65°F), and summers are severe enough that cooling can dominate the annual bill, with 3321 cooling degree days on the cooling side. 32°F is the figure equipment gets sized against here, the 99th-percentile cold snap, not an average day, with a low of 21.4°F in the 2024 station record. Worked through the model, that's a seasonal COP of 3.15 on the standard unit fit for this climate. Seabrook's winters don't get cold enough to need the cold-climate premium, a standard unit holds up fine. These numbers come from Morgans Point, the closest NOAA station, 5.9 miles out.
What it actually costs to run, year to year
Electricity use for heating alone comes out to about 686 kWh a year on the 2000-square-foot reference house; folding in cooling puts the electric bill near $568 a year. The gas furnace it replaces burns roughly 9 Mcf a year at $19.42 per Mcf here, for a running cost near $868 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 $1,494 ahead.
The break-even point in Seabrook
In Seabrook 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 Seabrook: the heat pump is worth it within a decade if it costs less than $3,000 more than replacing the furnace and AC, and within 7 years if the gap is under $2,100.
Electric resistance heat in Seabrook, compared
Plenty of homes in Seabrook heat with electricity alone, no gas line involved. Swap the comparison to resistance heat instead of gas, and Seabrook's answer improves. The gap still doesn't close: the $7,500 incremental cost outlasts the 15-year equipment life here even against resistance heat.
Where Seabrook ranks in this dataset
Among 3206 cities, Seabrook's winter puts it at rank 2949 for severity, while its size puts it at rank 2514 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.
Deciding what's next in Seabrook, TX
Seabrook, Texas is home to about 13,976 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 Seabrook, nothing is lost by holding off until the current equipment genuinely fails.
Ask a local HVAC contractor for a quote before committing either way.
More on how this number was built
Every constant behind this page, the 3.15 seasonal COP, the degree-day corrections, the equipment costs, is documented in the methodology guide. Homes in Seabrook without gas service should read the electric-resistance comparison instead, the numbers there differ from the gas case above.