About this site
What I am not
I am not an HVAC contractor, and I am not a mechanical engineer. I have never installed a heat pump and I am not going to pretend otherwise, because a site that overstates who wrote it deserves to be distrusted.
Nothing here is a substitute for a licensed contractor who has walked through your house, measured it and sized the equipment. If this site and your contractor disagree about your home, your contractor is looking at your home and I am not.
What I actually do
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency publishes the full certification record for every ENERGY STAR product — every certified combination, with its measured efficiency ratings, capacities and refrigerant. It is public domain data, and it is excellent. It is also published in a form built for engineers and program administrators, not for a person trying to understand a quote they were handed yesterday.
I take that record, cross it with residential electricity prices published by the U.S. Energy Information Administration, and turn it into answers to the questions people actually have: what does this specific unit cost to run where I live, is this brand really made by the company on the badge, what is the refrigerant in it and does that matter.
Right now the database covers 5,521 certified ducted heat pump outdoor models, drawn from 266,456 certified outdoor-and-indoor combinations, plus residential electricity prices and heating degree days for the 50 U.S. states and the District of Columbia, updated monthly from the source. It covers the EPA's ENERGY STAR ducted list, not the whole U.S. market.
How to check me
Every number on this site is computed from those two public sources. Nothing is copied from another website, and nothing is estimated where a measured figure exists. Where a figure depends on an assumption — a typical annual heating load, for example — the assumption is stated next to the number, not buried, because a cost estimate without its assumptions is just a confident-sounding guess.
The sources are open to you as well:
- EPA ENERGY STAR Product Finder — the certification record, searchable by model.
- EIA Electric Power Monthly — residential electricity prices by state.
If you find a figure here that disagrees with the source, I want to know. Write to me and I will check it and correct it. Being wrong in public and fixing it is the only claim to accuracy that means anything.
How this site is paid for
CertifiedSpecs currently carries no advertising and no affiliate links, and earns nothing. The intention is to support it with display advertising once it has enough readers to qualify for an ad network. If that happens, this section will say so plainly, and any commercial relationship that could affect what you read here will be disclosed on the page where it applies.
No manufacturer has paid for placement here, and none has been offered any. The rankings on this site come out of arithmetic on federal certification data, which is precisely why they are worth reading.