Terms of Use

Who publishes this site

btuwise.com is published by Honeygoat GmbH, Kägenstrasse 21, 4153 Reinach, Switzerland — commercial register number CH-270-4005459-5. Full company details are on the Legal Notice page. In these terms, "btuwise", "we" and "us" mean Honeygoat GmbH as the operator of this site, and "you" means anyone who visits it.

1. Informational purpose — this is not professional advice

btuwise publishes general consumer information: explanatory guides, comparison tables, price ranges and free calculators. It is written for orientation, to help you understand the subject well enough to have a competent conversation with a professional and to judge the quotes you receive.

btuwise does not provide engineering, HVAC contracting, electrical, legal, tax or financial advice, and reading it creates no professional, advisory or fiduciary relationship of any kind. Honeygoat GmbH is not an HVAC contractor, not an installer, not an engineering firm, not a lender, not a loan broker and not a licensed financial adviser. It is a publisher.

Decisions about what equipment to buy, how to install it, what to pay and how to finance it remain yours, taken together with the licensed professionals you engage. Nothing on this site substitutes for a site survey, a written quote, a load calculation, an electrical inspection or a lender's offer.

2. Calculators and figures are estimates

btuwise offers four calculators — BTU sizing, installed cost, running cost and financing. All four apply published rules of thumb and typical market ranges to the values you type in. They produce a planning estimate, and they are built to be transparent about how the number was reached so you can sanity-check it.

What they are not:

• The sizing calculator is not an ACCA Manual J load calculation. Manual J is the recognized professional standard for residential load calculation in the United States. It accounts for your building's actual construction, orientation, glazing, infiltration and duct conditions through a survey of the property. Our calculator works from square footage and a handful of adjustment factors, which is a useful approximation and a different thing. Confirm the final capacity with a licensed HVAC professional before you buy equipment.
• The cost and running-cost figures are not a quote. They are ranges derived from typical US market data. Your actual price depends on your contractor, your local labor market, line-set routing, electrical work, permits, site access and the equipment you choose. The binding number is the one in a written quote. Running cost additionally depends on your utility tariff, your usage and your weather.
• The financing calculator is not a loan offer or a pre-qualification. It performs standard amortization on the amount, rate and term you enter. Real offers carry their own APR, fees, terms and eligibility criteria, and only a lender can make one.
• Prices, specifications, incentives and tax credits change. Figures are accurate to the best of our knowledge on the date of publication or last review, and are not continuously updated. Verify current prices with the retailer, current specifications with the manufacturer, and current incentives with the program administrator or a tax adviser.

Because these are estimates, they should be treated as a starting point for a professional assessment rather than as a result to act on directly.

3. Safety — refrigerant, electricity and permits

Mini-split work touches sealed refrigerant circuits and mains electricity. Two points of US law matter here, and they are not optional:

• Refrigerant handling requires EPA Section 608 certification. Under the Clean Air Act and its implementing regulations at 40 CFR Part 82, Subpart F, a person who opens or services a charged refrigerant circuit must hold the appropriate EPA Section 608 certification. Pre-charged quick-connect systems are the recognized homeowner exception, because the sealed circuit is never opened during installation.
• Electrical work belongs to a licensed electrician. Most systems need a dedicated 208/230 V circuit. That work must comply with the National Electrical Code and any state or local amendments, and a permit and inspection are commonly required. Licensing rules for HVAC and electrical work vary by state and municipality.

Where a manufacturer's installation instructions differ from anything on this site, the manufacturer's instructions govern. Where this site describes a task as homeowner-feasible, that describes typical conditions and does not assess your specific situation, your skills or your local code. If you are unsure, engage a licensed professional — this is the kind of work where a mistake causes property damage or personal injury.

5. How btuwise earns — advertising and affiliate links

btuwise is free to read and is funded by advertising and by commissions from affiliate and referral partners. Some links to retailers, contractor marketplaces and lenders earn us a commission when you click through and buy or request a quote, at no additional cost to you. As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases.

Paid links are labelled where they appear. Which relationships exist, how they work, and the firewall between them and our rankings are set out in full in the Advertising & Affiliate Disclosure and the Editorial Policy. In short: commissions fund the site, and the recommendations are made on the merits, by criteria we publish.

6. Third-party links, contractors and lenders

This site links to manufacturers, retailers, contractor-matching marketplaces, lenders and official sources. Those destinations are operated by others, under their own terms and privacy policies, and lie outside our control. A link is a pointer, not an endorsement, a vetting or a guarantee.

In particular: btuwise does not verify the licensing, insurance, bonding, workmanship or pricing of any contractor you are matched with, and it does not verify the terms, rates or eligibility criteria of any lender. Check a contractor's license with your state or local licensing board, confirm insurance directly, and read a lender's disclosures before you sign. Any contract you enter is between you and that third party.

7. Our content and how you may use it

The original text, calculators and their underlying logic, comparison tables, data compilations, graphics, page designs and the btuwise name and logo are owned by Honeygoat GmbH or by the rights holders named, and are protected by copyright and other laws.

You are welcome to:

• read, print and save pages for your own personal, non-commercial use;
• quote a short excerpt with clear attribution to btuwise and a link to the source page.

The following require our prior written permission:

• reproducing or republishing pages, tables or substantial parts of them;
• copying the calculators or their calculation logic into another product or site;
• systematic scraping, crawling for bulk extraction, or use of the content to train or fine-tune machine-learning models;
• any commercial redistribution of the content.

Requests are genuinely welcome — write to info@btuwise.com and tell us what you have in mind.

8. Trademarks of others

Mitsubishi Electric, Daikin, MrCool, Pioneer, Senville, LG, Fujitsu, Gree, Cooper&Hunter, Amazon and all other brand and product names on this site are the trademarks of their respective owners. They are used for identification, description and comparison. btuwise is an independent publisher and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, sponsored by or authorized by any manufacturer, retailer, contractor network or lender named on the site.

9. Copyright complaints

We respect copyright and expect the same. If you believe material on btuwise.com infringes a copyright you own or represent, write to info@btuwise.com with the subject line "Copyright notice", including:

• your physical or electronic signature, as a person authorized to act for the rights owner;
• identification of the copyrighted work you claim has been infringed;
• the URL of the material on our site, precise enough for us to locate it;
• your name, mailing address, telephone number and email address;
• a statement that you have a good-faith belief that the use is unauthorized by the owner, its agent or the law;
• a statement that the information in your notice is accurate and, under penalty of perjury, that you are authorized to act for the owner.

We review every notice we receive and act on well-founded ones as quickly as we can. Please note that under 17 U.S.C. § 512(f), a person who knowingly and materially misrepresents that material is infringing may be liable for damages, including costs and attorneys' fees. US courts have held that a rights holder must consider whether a use is fair before sending a notice.

10. Availability and changes to the site

btuwise is published on a best-effort basis. Pages, calculators, figures and features may be changed, updated, moved or withdrawn at any time, and access may be interrupted for maintenance or for reasons outside our control. Content reflects our understanding on the date shown; we revise pages as the market and the rules change, and older material may not have been reviewed recently.

11. Limitation of liability

To the fullest extent permitted by applicable law, Honeygoat GmbH and its directors, employees and contributors are not liable for indirect, incidental, special, consequential or punitive damages, or for lost profits, lost savings, business interruption, equipment cost, installation cost, remediation cost or loss of data, arising out of or relating to your access to or use of this site or your reliance on its content — including any decision about equipment sizing, purchase, installation, running cost or financing.

Where liability cannot be excluded, our total aggregate liability arising out of or relating to this site is limited to one hundred US dollars (US$100).

What these limits do not cover. Nothing in these terms excludes or limits liability for fraud or fraudulent misrepresentation, for willful misconduct, for gross negligence, for death or personal injury caused by negligence, or for any other liability that cannot lawfully be excluded or limited. Some jurisdictions do not allow certain exclusions or limitations, in which case those parts apply only to the extent permitted there and the rest remain in force.

12. Accessibility

We aim to meet WCAG 2.2 Level AA, and we describe honestly what is in place and what still falls short in our Accessibility Statement. If any part of this site blocks you, write to info@btuwise.com — accessibility reports are treated as priority fixes.

13. Privacy

What data is processed when you use this site, who processes it, and the rights you have (including under the California Consumer Privacy Act and other US state privacy laws) are set out in the Privacy Policy.

14. Changes to these terms

These terms may be revised as the site develops. The version published here, with the date at the top of the page, is the current one. Substantive revisions are reflected in that date, so you can see at a glance whether anything has moved since you last looked.

15. Severability

If any provision of these terms is held unenforceable in whole or in part, that provision applies to the maximum extent permitted, or is severed if it cannot, and the remaining provisions continue in full force.

16. Governing law and place of jurisdiction

These terms and the content of this site are governed by the substantive law of Switzerland, excluding its conflict-of-laws rules and the UN Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods. The place of jurisdiction is Reinach BL, Switzerland, at the registered office of Honeygoat GmbH.

Consumer rights are unaffected. If you use this site as a consumer, this clause does not deprive you of the protection of mandatory provisions of the law of the country or state in which you reside, and does not remove any right you have to bring proceedings in the courts of that place where such a right cannot be excluded by agreement. In particular, nothing here waives rights under US federal or state consumer-protection law.

17. Contact

Questions about these terms, permission requests, corrections and press enquiries go to info@btuwise.com, or via the Contact page. Postal address: Honeygoat GmbH, Kägenstrasse 21, 4153 Reinach, Switzerland.

Related pages

• Legal Notice — who operates the site
• Privacy Policy — what data is processed, and your rights
• Advertising & Affiliate Disclosure — how btuwise earns
• Editorial Policy — how the guides are made and checked
• Accessibility — our accessibility commitment
• Contact — how to reach us