If you’re in the market for a new HVAC system, energy efficiency is likely at the top of your list of concerns. What exactly is ARI certification? And does it really matter? Yes, says Alan Love of Charlotte heating and cooling company Tier 1 Heating & Air. According to Love, ARI certification is the best way to ensure that your HVAC system is operating at its maximum efficiency and that you’re getting what you paid for in terms of energy savings.
What Is It?
ARI (Air-Conditioning and Refrigeration Institute), Love says, is a third-party certification that validates the performance of an HVAC system. There are a number of factors, he says, that can affect an HVAC system’s efficiency. While an individual piece of equipment may be rated very highly in terms of energy efficiency, and therefore be very expensive to buy, the component parts that unit is matched with may cause it to operate less efficiently than it’s capable of. ARI certification, Love says, is intended to verify the actual efficiency of an entire HVAC system (rather than an individual component) as installed.
HVAC efficiency, Love explains, is measured in SEERs (Seasonal Energy Efficiency Rating). The lower the SEER rating, the more energy is required for heating and cooling. The higher the SEER rating, the more energy-efficient the system is. “If we were to walk into a warehouse, for example,” Love explains, “and I showed you two condensing units, one with a 13 SEER rating and one with a 16 SEER rating, you could expect to pay twice as much for the 16 SEER unit because, in theory, it is much more efficient than the 13 SEER unit.” However, Love says, depending on the equipment that condensing unit is eventually matched up with upon installation, the customer may or may not actually get 16 SEER performance from it. This, he says, is an example of a situation in which an ARI certification would be beneficial.
“ARI isn’t concerned with the SEER rating each piece of equipment might have written on the outside of the box it comes in,” Love says. “Instead, ARI takes into account all the component parts the unit is matched with to show how efficient that system will be when it’s actually installed.” Tier 1 Heating & Air, he says, provides ARI certificates with all HVAC system installations.
Why Does It Matter?
There are a number of reasons that ARI certification should matter to a consumer. Most importantly, it assures the customer that he is getting his money’s worth from his HVAC system. “Top rated HVAC systems are big investments,” Love says. “The consumer should be confident that his purchase will pay off in the kind of energy savings he signed up for.”
To actually achieve peak efficiency, he says, all of the system’s components must be working together, including the thermostat, condensing unit, evaporative coil, furnace and duct system that will ultimately carry the air.
“HVAC components,” Love says, “aren’t just ‘plug-and-play.’ Each system has to be designed for a specific type of performance under specific conditions. ARI certification ensures that you’re getting exactly what you’ve paid for, and that the system is going to function as promised.”