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How we research, write and check what we publish

Every page here makes claims about money, mechanical code or the law. This is the standard each one has to meet before it goes live, how the cost estimates are built, and what we do when we are wrong.

Who writes and who reviews

Pages are written by the HVACMatch editorial team, and each one is checked against the sources listed at its foot. We have not yet appointed a licensed technical reviewer, so no page claims to be expert reviewed.

When a named, licensed reviewer is appointed, this section will show their name, license number, state, years in the trade and a link to the public registry entry, and each page they have read will say so. Until then, treat the sources at the bottom of each page as the authority, and check anything that matters with your state's licensing board or your city.

Where the numbers come from

FigureSourceHow often it is checked
Population, housing age, home valueU.S. Census Bureau, American Community Survey five-year estimates 2023 (tables B01003, B25034, B25077), on city pagesEach ACS release
Technician wagesU.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025 release, heating, air conditioning and refrigeration mechanics and installers. These are wages paid to technicians, not prices charged to homeowners.Each BLS release
Permit feesThe city's own published fee schedule where one is available, and the state fee schedule where one exists. Where none is published, we print no fee.When the city adopts a new schedule
Heating and cooling degree daysNOAA National Centers for Environmental Information, 1991-2020 annual normals, base 65 F, at the nearest weather station in our set. Where a city has no station of its own, the page names the station used.When NOAA publishes new normals
Energy cost evidenceU.S. Department of Energy Federal Energy Management Program and ENERGY STAR pages. These use federal energy prices, not your utility bill.Each review
Codes, permits, licensingFederal rules (EPA Section 608, 10 CFR 430.32) and, on state and city pages, each state's statutes, codes and licensing pages, each linked on the page that uses itWhen a rule changes or a reader reports one
Rebates and tax creditsThe utility's or agency's own program page, each line dated. Dollar amounts appear only where the program prints them, and never as an evergreen figure. Federal tax credits 25C and 25D ended for property placed in service after December 31, 2025, per the IRS.Each review

The rules every page follows

  1. 1A fact we cannot source is left out. A fact we could not confirm on the source's own page stays in only if the sentence says so and names whom to ask. We do not guess a code rule or a permit fee from memory.
  2. 2Every cost figure is labelled an estimate and shows how it was built. We never present a range as a quote.
  3. 3Pages say when you do not need a technician. If a clean filter or a reset fixes the problem, the page says so before the form.
  4. 4We do not publish reviews, rankings or "best of" lists. We have no basis for ranking companies we do not inspect.
  5. 5Referral income never changes what a page recommends. Companies that pay for requests do not see pages before publication and cannot edit them.
  6. 6Each page shows the date it was last reviewed and, where it quotes prices, the date those prices are as of.
  7. 7Pages may be drafted with software help. A person reads each one, and every factual claim has to trace to a source we list, or it comes out.

How we estimate costs

The ranges on this site are estimates, not quotes. Each service range is built from published national cost ranges (one or two per service, taken from third-party cost guides that we have not been able to verify and do not show as Michigan prices): we take the median of their lows to the median of their highs, or widen the range by 15 percent each side when only one guide gives a usable figure. That band is multiplied by Michigan's HVAC technician wage ratio to the US (1.00: the Michigan mean of $31.01 an hour divided by the national mean of $31.14, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, May 2025), and for work that needs a mechanical permit we add a typical permit fee, about $105, which is the median of the all-in minimum permit charges on six Michigan city forms. Where a Michigan company publishes a price for the job, the low end of the estimate is held at or below it; we have too few to show a range of company prices. A wage is what technicians are paid, not what you are charged. Service pages also show wages, city permit fees, federal energy-cost evidence and rebates in their own rows, as evidence beside the estimate and not as part of it.

We are collecting the prices that heating and cooling companies publish on their own sites. We have not yet collected customer quotes or invoices from them. When we have enough published prices, they will appear in our tables with the number of companies and the date of each price. Ranges are reviewed at least twice a year and whenever BLS or a city's fee schedule changes, and each page shows its last review date. Your actual price depends on your home, the equipment, the work and the contractor you choose.

Corrections

If something on this site is wrong, tell us which page, which number or rule, and what you saw instead, with a link if you have one. We check it against the source. If you are right we fix the page, write the date of the fix at the foot of that page and add a line to the log below.

  • Oct 19, 2026: Site launch. No corrections yet.

How the site is paid for

HVACMatch earns money when a heating and cooling company, or a referral partner acting for one, receives a homeowner request from us. That is a conflict of interest and we say so on every page. We deal with it through the rules above: sources on every claim, no rankings, no paid placement, and pages that tell you when not to call anyone. The full account is on how it works.