Heat Pump Installation in San Marcos, TX
A new system here will heat from November through March and cool from April through October every year. Tell us about the house, and a licensed contractor who covers Hays County will get in touch.
Tell us about the job
It takes about a minute.
Your heat pump works almost every month here
San Marcos asks a heat pump to run nearly year round. Cooling season runs April through October, with summer afternoons averaging 94°F. Heating season is shorter, November through March, and winter nights average 41°F. Put those together and the unit is working twelve months a year.
A new split-system heat pump has to meet federal minimums of 14.3 SEER2 for cooling and 7.5 HSPF2 for heating. That is the baseline it starts from. Hays County has seen 8 winter storms and 36 damaging wind events over the past ten years, and across Texas a third of households went at least 24 hours without power in 2024. Most heat pumps here run on electricity. When the power goes out, so does the heat, until it comes back.
- 5 months
- November through March, your system heats
- 7 months
- April through October, it cools
- 41°F
- the average winter night it heats against
- 94°F
- the average summer afternoon it cools against
NOAA nClimDiv, 1991–2020 normals
Texas requires HVAC contractors to hold a state license.
TDLR tests contractors before they get a license and keeps a record of who holds one. That record follows the contractor, not the job, so the same license covers this installation and every other one they take on.
For a heat pump going in, the license tells you the contractor met the state's bar. What checks the work itself is the local building office. In most cities and counties, an installation like this needs a permit and an inspection once the work is done, and that inspection is what confirms the heat pump was set up correctly.
Source: Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation
- Is a heat pump better than a furnace?
- A heat pump does both, so it heats your home in winter and cools it in summer with one system instead of two. A furnace only heats, and it burns gas or uses resistance heat to do it, while a heat pump moves heat instead of generating it, which is why it uses less electricity to run. With winter nights here averaging 41°F, a heat pump does not have to work as hard as it would somewhere colder. Whether it makes sense to replace a furnace with one depends on the house, so a contractor can look at what you have now and tell you what fits.
- What's the difference between a heat pump and an air conditioner?
- An air conditioner only cools. A heat pump does the same job in summer, moving heat out of your home, but it can also run in reverse and pull heat into your home in winter. Mechanically they work the same way and use the same kind of refrigerant cycle, so a heat pump is really an air conditioner that can heat too. That matters here since homes need cooling April through October and heat November through March, so one heat pump covers both instead of pairing an air conditioner with a separate furnace.
- Does a heat pump work in cold weather?
- Yes. A heat pump keeps pulling heat from the outside air even when it is cold out, and it only gets harder for it to do that as the temperature drops well below freezing. Winter lows here average 41°F, which is mild enough that a heat pump is not straining to keep up. Newer heat pumps also have to meet a federal minimum of 7.5 HSPF2 for heating efficiency, so any current model is built to perform through a winter like this one.