Research
Original HVAC research
Original analysis of how American homes are heated and cooled, computed from primary federal data.
What this is
HyreHVAC publishes 13 original studies of how American homes are heated and cooled, computed from primary federal data such as EIA’s Residential Energy Consumption Survey (RECS).
Every study names its source files, publishes its method and carries the standard error on each estimate. Figures we calculate are labeled as calculations.
Research is credited to the HyreHVAC Research Desk, not to an individual.
Which states have the most homes without air conditioning?
Alaska, by share, but the state list is not a climate map. Whether an American home has air conditioning varies more between states than almost any other home technology. Alaska is at 93.1% without cooling; New Jersey is at 3.5%. The national figure of 11.3% describes almost nowhere.
The entry that does the most work is Hawaii, at 43.0% without cooling in a state with one of the three highest cooling loads in the country. Any explanation of American cooling that rests on climate alone has to account for that, and none of them do.
Which HVAC studies have we published?
What standards does every study follow?
Statistics are traced to the organization that produced them. We do not repeat a figure because other sites repeat it, and we do not cite a secondary source when the primary file is downloadable.
Where we compute a share, a rank or a rate from source data, it says so. Nothing we derive is presented as a reported statistic, and nothing third-party is presented as our research.
These are survey estimates, not counts. Standard errors are computed from the replicate weights the federal file supplies and are printed alongside the estimate wherever the number is small enough for the difference to matter.
Before publishing anything derived from a federal microdata file, we reproduce the agency’s own published tables from it. The RECS machinery behind these studies reproduces EIA’s published state air conditioning estimates and relative standard errors for all 51 jurisdictions.
An estimate with a relative standard error above 30% is reported as "too few respondents". That is EIA’s own rule, applied to our derived cells rather than only to theirs, and where a suppressed cell would have made a good headline we say so on the page.
Every figure and every mark on every chart is generated from one dataset by script. A number in a sentence and the same number in the table below it cannot disagree, and the next survey cycle redraws every study.
Each study carries a limitations section. Where a result depends on an outlier, a definition or a reporting quirk, we say so in the finding itself rather than below it.
Research here is published under the HyreHVAC Research Desk. We do not put an individual byline on original analysis, and we do not claim first-hand experience the organization cannot evidence.
Where can you find every figure in one place?
The studies above each answer one question in depth. HVAC statistics collects every figure they produce into a single page: around 95 of them across cooling, heating, heat pumps, equipment performance, refrigerant, prices, air quality and the trade.
Each is labeled with what kind of claim it is: a figure the agency published, a figure we computed from the agency’s microdata, or a provision read from a federal rule.
It also lists the widely circulated HVAC numbers we will not repeat, and why. Rebate and incentive figures have their own page: HVAC rebate statistics. Our editorial policy covers how we check and correct.
Can you cite or reuse this research?
Yes. Journalists, researchers and analysts are welcome to cite and reproduce these findings, including the charts. We ask for a link to the study page, because the methodology, the standard errors and the limitations live there and a figure quoted without them is easy to misread.
Every study names its source files precisely enough to be checked independently. The extraction code behind them is deliberately boring and reproducible: download the federal file, run the script, get the same numbers.
If you find an error, we would rather hear it than not. Corrections are made on the page with a dated note, not silently.
Questions
Where do the figures in HyreHVAC research come from?
Why does every estimate carry a standard error?
What happens when a cell has too few respondents?
Who is the author of the research?
Written and audited by
HYRE HVAC Research Desk
Primary-source research, data analysis and fact checking
We are a research desk, not a sales floor. We read the federal microdata file, the statute or the manufacturer data sheet ourselves, and we publish the figure with the document it came from and the date we retrieved it.
Where a number cannot be traced to a primary source, we publish the shorter page and say what we could not verify.
The counts below are generated from the published pages themselves, last counted September 28, 2026, and they are what we have actually published rather than what we intend to.
- 13
- studies published
- 12
- federal sources read and cited
- 8
- studies published with their full dataset as CSV
- 51
- jurisdictions reproduced against EIA’s own tables
How this desk works
- Primary sources only. Federal data comes from the agency that collects it, in the file that agency publishes. We do not cite an article that cites a source; we download the source and compute the figure ourselves.
- We validate against the agency before we publish. First, we use each federal microdata file to reproduce the agency’s own published tables. Our cooling research reproduces EIA’s state estimates and standard errors for all 51 jurisdictions. That check caught a variance formula that was off by a factor of four.
- Every estimate carries its uncertainty. These are survey figures, not counts. Standard errors are computed from the replicate weights the federal file supplies and printed beside the estimate. An estimate too imprecise to publish is reported as such rather than printed.
- Nothing is typed by hand. Prose, tables and charts all read from one dataset built by script, so a number in a sentence and the same number in the table below it cannot disagree.
- We publish the data, not just the conclusion. 8 of our 13 studies offer the full computed table as a CSV download on the page, so you can check the analysis or disagree with it. A study without a row-level dataset gets no download link and claims none in its structured data.
- We correct in public. Where we have published a figure wrongly we fix the figure, rewrite any analysis that rested on it rather than patching the number underneath it, and leave a dated correction note on the page.
- We do not install or sell HVAC equipment, and we take no payment for placement, ranking or a favorable mention. Nobody buys a position on this site.
Data as of RECS 2020 public use microdata, v7. Authorship on this site is organizational: the analysis belongs to the desk rather than to a named individual, and we do not publish credentials we do not hold. Our editorial policy sets out how we source, date and correct what we publish.
Sources & retrieval dates
Working out what your own home needs
National estimates describe a market. Sizing, ductwork and fuel prices decide a specific house.