01 Job details
Who and where
Your name, the job address and what the job is. The address sets the sales tax.
Customer
Job
Tell us about the home on the Sizing tab, pick a system on System & Equipment, and your installed price range updates as you go. Your first estimate needs no sign-up.
Saved estimates stored in this browser
02 Sizing
Size the home
Square footage and a few details about the house set the tonnage. Nothing is priced until this is in.
Quick load sizing rule-of-thumb — not a substitute for Manual J
sq ft
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Cooling BTU/h
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Recommended tons
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Heating BTU/h
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Furnace input size
⚠️ This is a quick ballpark for estimating only. Final equipment selection should be based on an
ACCA Manual J load calculation — oversizing causes short-cycling, poor dehumidification,
and shorter equipment life.
03 System & equipment
Pick the system
System type, then the equipment tier. The installed price range on the right updates as you go.
System configuration
Equipment tier brand sets series/refrigerant/availability · prices still come from your Price Book tiersinstalled price — equipment, labor, permit and haul-away
04 Line items Contractor
Every priced line
Equipment, labor, materials and permits as the price book builds them. Edit any line.
Line items prices are what the customer pays — adjust under Pricing only for a discount or tax
| Category | Description | Qty | Unit price | Total |
|---|
05 Pricing Contractor
Adjustments, tax and incentives
Add-ons, the financing illustration, contingency, tax and margin on top of the book price — and the incentive check.
Adjustments
%
%
$
The price book is already retail — the line items are what the customer pays. Leave the uplift (and Overhead & profit above) at 0 to quote the book; use them only for a deliberate job-specific uplift.
Sales tax
%
Incentive sanity check status Aug 2026 — details under CA reference
🚫 No federal credits on 2026 proposals. 25C and 25D were terminated — nothing placed in
service after 31 Dec 2025 qualifies. TECH Clean California and HEEHRA single-family are
fully reserved (waitlist only). Don't build any of these into a quote.
✅ SMUD is the most reliable live incentive: $3,000 gas→electric heat pump conversion,
$1,000 electric→electric. HEEHRA multifamily is still open (up to $14,000/unit).
LADWP / SCE / PG&E / SDG&E amounts are unverified — call before quoting. Enter a confirmed
rebate as the Discount above so it shows on the proposal.
0406 Your price rangeProposal
The price range, on paperThe proposal
What the range covers, ready to email as a PDF. A licensed contractor will confirm it on a free site walk once they open.Print it, save it as a PDF, or send it.
Company Contractor
Your company on the proposal
Company info appears on proposals
Pricing
Equipment, labor and material prices come from the company price book on the server and are the same figures the customer sees. To adjust a single job, edit its lines under Line items or use the Pricing adjustments; to change the book itself, update it on the server.
CA reference Contractor
2026 field brief
2026 field brief — California from HVAC Spec Deck 2026 · compiled 2 Sep 2026 · verify before quoting
- The industry split into two refrigerant camps. R-454B: Carrier/Bryant/Payne, Trane/American Standard, Lennox, Rheem/Ruud, York/Bosch. R-32: Daikin, Goodman, Amana, and most ductless. Both are A2L mildly flammable — different gauges, different leak detectors, separate recovery tanks. Cylinder color no longer identifies the gas: read the label.
- Federal credits are gone. 25C and 25D terminated for anything placed in service after 31 Dec 2025; 179D closed to construction starting after 30 Jun 2026. Never put a federal credit in a 2026 proposal.
- Premium tiers skip 3.5 ton. Nearly every variable-speed flagship is built 2/3/4/5 only. Half-tons live in the single-stage entry lines. A Manual J landing at 3.4–3.7 tons forces a down-tier or oversize — the most expensive surprise in a quote.
- Title 24 2025 cycle is in force. Permits filed on/after 1 Jan 2026 fall under the 2025 standards: heat pump is the prescriptive baseline, and refrigerant charge verification applies to heat pumps in all 16 climate zones.
- R-410A grey zone. The AIM Act install prohibition took effect 1 Jan 2026, but EPA announced low-priority enforcement while it reconsiders. Still on the books; state/local code can still require A2L. Servicing existing R-410A stays legal. Leak-repair threshold dropped 50 lb → 15 lb — now captures multi-zone mini-splits, 5-ton+ RTUs, and VRF.
Title 24 / HERS quick check
HERS test triggers: replacing any space-conditioning equipment (condenser, coil, air handler, or furnace) · installing/replacing more than ~25 ft of duct (§150.2(b)1D) · relocating equipment.
Paper trail: CF1R before install (you) → CF2R at install (you) → CF3R by an independent certified HERS rater via CalCERTS or CHEERS → feeds the building department for final.
Numbers to hit: duct leakage ~10% on altered systems, ~5% on new/fully-replaced · minimum ~350 CFM per ton airflow before charge can be verified · fan watts within the CF1R limit.
License: a standalone change-out is C-20 scope, not B General Building.
ADU angle: keep an ADU mechanically and electrically separate and compliance scopes to the ADU alone — extending the main house's ducts drags the whole property into HERS testing. Ductless heat pump clears Title 24 minimums in most CA climate zones.
Incentives — status August 2026
| Incentive | Status | Bottom line |
|---|---|---|
| Federal 25C / 25D | TERMINATED | Nothing placed in service after 31 Dec 2025. |
| HEEHRA single-family | FULLY RESERVED | Waitlist only since 24 Feb 2026. Don't quote it. |
| HEEHRA multifamily | OPEN | Up to $14,000/unit via TECH. Worth chasing on MF work. |
| TECH Clean CA single-family | FULLY RESERVED | Closed to new reservations since 14 Nov 2025. |
| SMUD | OPEN — boosted | $3,000 gas→electric HP conversion · $1,000 electric→electric. Most reliable live incentive. |
| LADWP | Unverified | ~$2,500/ton claimed by aggregators — call before quoting. |
| SCE / PG&E / SDG&E | Verify live | No confirmed standalone HP amount. PG&E thermostat ~$120. |
| SGIP | Water heating only | $3,800–4,885 for HP water heaters, not space conditioning. |
DOE minimums — Southwest / CA effective Jan 2023, still current
| Equipment | Minimum |
|---|---|
| Split AC < 45 kBtu/h | 14.3 SEER2 |
| Split AC ≥ 45 kBtu/h | 13.8 SEER2 + 11.2–11.7 EER2 |
| Split heat pump | 14.3 SEER2 / 7.5 HSPF2 |
| Packaged AC/HP | 13.4 SEER2 / 6.7 HSPF2 |
SEER2 runs ~4–5% below the old SEER number for the same hardware (14.3 SEER2 ≈ 15.0 SEER).
SEER2 headlines are "up to" figures — quote off the AHRI-matched pair for the specific tonnage.
CA packaged gas units need the Ultra-Low NOx variant.
Ductless installed price bands whole-system, market-rate
| Zones | Installed range | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| 1 zone | $3,000 – 6,800 | CA ADU single-zone typically $3,500–7,500 for 400–800 sq ft |
| 2 zones | $5,500 – 11,000 | Labor alone runs $500–2,000 per zone. Top failure modes are workmanship, not brand: inadequate vacuum pull (moisture → acid → compressor loss) and bad flares. Pull the specific IOM for line-set limits before cutting pipe. |
| 3 zones | $9,000 – 16,000 | |
| 4 zones | $12,000 – 20,500 | |
| 5 zones | $15,500 – 24,500 |
Field notes that pay
- Parts channel beats nameplate. Carrier/Bryant/Payne share OEM part numbers — one truck stock covers three brands. Same for York/Coleman/Luxaire. Lennox routes through its own PartsPlus stores: higher markup, inconsistent stock.
- Communicating controls are lock-in. ComfortLink II, Infinity System Control, iComfort, Affinity — full modulation is gated behind the maker's own thermostat. A generic smart stat drops a variable-speed system to fixed-stage. Mid and entry tiers have no such constraint.
- Registration is money on the table. Most brands double parts coverage 5→10 yr on a 60–90 day window — but California gets full terms without registering (registration-contingent warranties are prohibited). Goodman/Amana go further: lifetime compressor, and Amana replaces the whole outdoor unit.
- Quote Amana where margin matters, Goodman only where the customer already priced the box. Same Texas factory; Goodman sells the identical condenser online direct to homeowners.
- Ductless warranty gates: Mitsubishi's 12-yr needs Diamond Contractor status; Fujitsu's needs Elite status (CA is exempt from the registration step). Equipment from unverified sellers may carry no warranty at all.
- Two A2L camps = two sets of everything. R-32 and R-454B tools and recovery cylinders are not interchangeable. Running both camps means duplicate tooling — budget it now.