Statistics
HVAC repair statistics
How often heating breaks, how often systems are replaced, and how many households cannot afford the fix. Two federal surveys, no vendor estimates.
Written by HYRE HVAC Research Desk Primary-source research, data analysis and fact checking
The short answer
HVAC repair statistics from the 2023 American Housing Survey: 2.7% of US households, about 3.4 million, were uncomfortably cold for 24 hours or more last winter because their heating equipment broke down.
In the two years before the survey, 5.1% of homes added or replaced central air and 4.5% added or replaced built-in heating.
EIA’s 2020 survey adds that 4.5% could not use their AC, and 2.7% their heating, because it was broken and the repair was unaffordable.
Where do these HVAC repair statistics come from?
From two federal household surveys, read from their raw files. The American Housing Survey (AHS), run by the Census Bureau for HUD, asks about heating breakdowns last winter and about home improvement jobs in the past two years.
The Residential Energy Consumption Survey (RECS), run by EIA, asks whether a household went without heating or cooling because broken equipment could not be afforded.
Neither survey asks how often an air conditioner needs a service call, so no honest national “repair rate” for AC exists.
Figures that claim one usually come from vendor surveys whose method is not public. We list only what these two surveys measure.
Our HVAC statistics page covers ownership and fuel; this page covers failure and replacement.
Which HVAC repair figures matter most?
How often does home heating break down?
For about 2.7% of households in a given winter, badly enough to leave the home cold for a day or more.
In the 2023 AHS, 7.8% of households that lived in their home the previous winter said it was uncomfortably cold for 24 hours or more. Of those, 34.2% said heating equipment broke down.
Other reasons included a utility interruption (27.8%), heating that could not keep up (15.6%) and poor insulation (14.9%). A household could give more than one.
Breakdowns repeat. Among homes left cold by a breakdown, 52.3% had one that lasted 6 hours or more, but 28.4% had three or more. A system that fails twice in one winter is giving a signal; our repair vs new system guide and the repair or replace calculator help weigh it.
Does the type of heating system change how often it fails?
| Main heating system | Cold 24h+ from a breakdown | Homes with this system |
|---|---|---|
| Forced warm-air furnace | 2.3% (± 0.1) | 86.5 million |
| Steam or hot water system | 5.3% (± 0.5) | 10.6 million |
| Electric heat pump | 1.9% (± 0.2) | 14.5 million |
| Built-in electric baseboard or panel | 3.1% (± 0.5) | 5.0 million |
AHS 2023. Share of households with each main heating system that were uncomfortably cold for 24 hours or more because the equipment broke down last winter. Standard errors in brackets.
Renters reported it at 4.2% against 2.0% for owners, so part of the difference by system reflects who lives in which kind of building, not the equipment alone.
Which heating systems leave homes cold most often?
Steam and hot water systems, at 5.3%, against 2.3% for forced-air furnaces and 1.9% for heat pumps. Electric baseboard sits at 3.1%.
HyreHVAC analysis: do not read this as proof that boilers are less reliable. Renters overall were cold from a breakdown about twice as often as owners, and a renter depends on someone else to arrange the fix.
The survey cannot separate the equipment from the building it is in or who maintains it. If you own a boiler, see boiler repair and boiler maintenance.
How many homes replace their AC or heating each year?
About 3.4 million central AC jobs and 3.0 million heating jobs a year, on a simple two-year average. The AHS asks about home improvement jobs in roughly the two years before the interview.
5.1% of occupied homes reported adding or replacing central air conditioning (about 6.8 million homes), and 4.5% reported adding or replacing built-in heating equipment (about 6.0 million).
Few of these jobs were do-it-yourself. Weighted by home, 11.7% of the AC jobs and 13.5% of the heating jobs were done mainly by the household. Most replacement work involves refrigerant, gas or line-voltage wiring, and refrigerant handling requires EPA Section 608 certification.
This page does not give job prices. The survey records spending, but a federal average across every home size and region is not a useful quote, and we do not publish price figures without sourced local quotes behind them. Use the replacement calculator with your own quotes, or see HVAC costs.
How many households cannot afford an HVAC repair?
In 2020, 4.5% of households (about 5.5 million) could not use their air conditioning, and 2.7% (about 3.4 million) their heating, at some point in the year because the equipment was broken and they could not afford to repair or replace it.
It falls steeply with income. Under $20,000 a year, 5.4% went without heat and 7.7% without cooling. At $100,000 or more, 0.8% and 1.6%. Manufactured homes are hit hardest of any housing type; see mobile home HVAC.
How old is the equipment that is running now?
| Age | Main heating equipment | Main air conditioning |
|---|---|---|
| Under 2 years | 11.3% (± 0.3) | 14.3% (± 0.3) |
| 2 to 4 years | 14.6% (± 0.3) | 19.9% (± 0.4) |
| 5 to 9 years | 22.7% (± 0.3) | 27.5% (± 0.4) |
| 10 to 14 years | 18.9% (± 0.4) | 18.7% (± 0.4) |
| 15 to 19 years | 12.5% (± 0.3) | 10.1% (± 0.3) |
| 20 years or more | 20.0% (± 0.4) | 9.6% (± 0.3) |
RECS 2020. Shares of homes that have that equipment. Standard errors in brackets.
Age is what the household reports. Age is not a failure date: our equipment lifespan study shows how wide the real range is.
How did we calculate these figures?
National public use file v1.0, household and project tables, downloaded October 26, 2026. Breakdown figures use households interviewed in an occupied home who lived there the previous winter (COLD = yes or no).
Cold from a breakdown is COLD = yes and COLDEQ = yes. Projects are JOBTYPE 26 (added or replaced central air) and 27 (added or replaced built-in heating), linked to households.
Our count of homes cold from a breakdown, 3,410 thousand, and its 90% margin match the Bureau’s own user-verification workbook exactly, as does the count of AC and heating projects. That confirms the weights and the 4/160 replicate formula.
Public use file v7. Unaffordable repair uses NOHEATBROKE and NOACBROKE, asked of every household. Ages use EQUIPAGE and ACEQUIPAGE among homes with that equipment.
One script reads both surveys and writes every figure, chart and the CSV.
What do these statistics not show?
Neither survey records service calls. A broken AC that was fixed the same day leaves no trace in either.
The AHS breakdown question is about heating last winter. There is no matching cooling question.
AHS is 2023, RECS is 2020. They are shown side by side, never combined into one number.
Households may forget or misdate jobs. The two-year window is approximate.
How should you cite these statistics?
Please cite as: HyreHVAC Research Desk, “HVAC repair statistics,” hyrehvac.com/statistics/hvac-repair/, from Census AHS 2023 and EIA RECS 2020 microdata retrieved October 26, 2026. Where you quote a single figure, name the survey it comes from. Charts may be reused with credit and a link. The CSV below has every figure with its standard error.
Questions
How often do furnaces break down?
How many people replace their AC each year?
What is the most common reason a home is too cold in winter?
How many households cannot afford HVAC repairs?
Do renters have more heating breakdowns?
Should I repair or replace after a breakdown?
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 October 26, 2026, and they are what we have actually published rather than what we intend to.
- 18
- studies published
- 15
- federal sources read and cited
- 15
- 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. 15 of our 18 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 AHS 2023 and RECS 2020 microdata, retrieved October 26, 2026. 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.
The data behind this page
Every figure on this page is computed from one file, and that file is published here so the analysis can be checked, disagreed with, or reused.
Sources & retrieval dates
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