Heat Pump Payback in Selma, TX
Heat pump vs. gas furnace in Selma, TX
This one's marginal in Selma: it only clears if you stay long enough. Swap a failed furnace and AC for a heat pump rather than buying like-for-like, and the extra cost here runs $3,000. Selma's residents would see roughly $336 a year back in running costs, putting the payback around 8.9 years. It's a genuine toss-up here, Selma's numbers don't point clearly either way.
Not the city you meant?
This runs the same numbers for 3206 US cities, not just Selma. Look one up here.
How cold Selma actually gets
1011 heating degree days pile up here every year, so Selma barely has a winter to speak of; the cooling side runs to 3754 cooling degree days, where summers are severe enough that cooling can dominate the annual bill. 27.3°F is the figure equipment gets sized against here, the 99th-percentile cold snap, not an average day, with a low of 16.2°F in the 2024 station record. Worked through the model, that's a seasonal COP of 3.01 on the standard unit fit for this climate. Selma's winters don't get cold enough to need the cold-climate premium, a standard unit holds up fine. Source: NOAA station Randolph AFB Airport, 4.9 miles from Selma, the closest one on record.
What it actually costs to run, year to year
Modelled on a typical 2000-square-foot house, the heat pump draws about 850 kWh a year to keep it warm, plus cooling, for a combined electric bill near $654 a year. That compares with roughly 11 Mcf a year of gas at Selma's $19.42 per-Mcf rate, about $990 a year with the old AC included, against a local electricity rate of 16.15¢/kWh. Priced as a standalone purchase, with a working furnace ripped out early, payback would take longer than the 15-year equipment life. Measured against the like-for-like replacement instead, a household here ends 15 years $2,039 ahead.
The break-even point in Selma
In Selma 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 Selma: the heat pump is worth it within a decade if it costs less than $3,360 more than replacing the furnace and AC, and within 7 years if the gap is under $2,352.
If your home heats with electric baseboard instead of gas
Not every home in Selma has gas service. Swap the comparison to resistance heat instead of gas, and Selma's answer improves. The saving here runs about $545 a year, which recovers the extra $7,500 spent going electric in roughly 13.8 years.
Where Selma ranks in this dataset
Selma lands at position 2908 out of 3206 cities on heating severity (coldest is 1), and 2821 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 Selma, TX
Selma, Texas is home to about 11,900 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 Selma, nothing is lost by holding off until the current equipment genuinely fails.
Ask a local HVAC contractor for a quote before committing either way.
Reading further on this page's numbers
Nothing above is a black box: the methodology guide shows the full arithmetic behind Selma's 3.01 seasonal COP and payback figure. Homes in Selma without gas service should read the electric-resistance comparison instead, the numbers there differ from the gas case above.