The house
Start from a common job, then replace every figure with your takeoff. Changing capacity, equipment, or location never overwrites a rate you already typed.
Your crew rates
A $52/h tech loaded at 34% is $69.68. Quoting the raw wage on a published $2,495 installed special is how a 100k attic-and-coil changeout that looked fine turns into a two-day loss after the first condensate run.
Hand the customer a proposal
The price above is for you. This is the page you print or save as a PDF and give to the customer — your details, their details, the scope, the deposit split, and a line for them to sign. Your business details are saved on this device so you only type them once; the customer’s details are never saved.
Everything on the printed page is text you typed or a number this calculator worked out. It contains no warranty, lien, or cancellation wording — those depend on your jurisdiction and your contract, and this tool is not the place to invent them.
Your bid
- Capacity and equipment
- Package and extras
- Crew hours
- Loaded labor
- Unit + fittings
- Travel + equipment
- Overhead
- Total cost
- Profit at this price
- Price per foot of duct
- Effective hourly rate
- Walk-away price
Where the hours go
Where the cost goes
Transparent arithmetic from your own inputs. Starting hours and material rates are common ballpark figures, not an industry standard, a Manual J, or an HVAC design — replace them with your own takeoff.
Common questions
How can a competitor advertise a furnace replacement for $2,495?
Usually because the special is written around one specific job: a 60,000 BTU 80% AFUE unit dropped into an open basement, with the first 15 ft of duct included, no coil, no gas work, no haul-away, and no thermostat. That job is one of the presets here, and it does price low. What does not scale with a trip charge is everything the coupon leaves out. Price your actual job beside it and the gap stops being a mystery and starts being a list of line items you can show the homeowner.
Why is "included duct" its own field?
Because that is where the coupon and the real job diverge. Only footage past the included run is charged — extra feet = max(0, duct run − included) — and those feet cost both material per foot and hours per foot. A 40 ft run against a 15 ft allowance is 25 ft of chargeable duct; a 12 ft basement run against the same allowance is zero, not a credit. That asymmetry is exactly what makes the brochure price honest on the small job and catastrophic on the big one.
Why does the attic cost more than the basement for the same furnace?
Access hours. A basement or open utility set is the baseline at zero extra hours, an interior closet adds about 1, and an attic adds about 2 — the carry, the platform, the working room, and the condensate run you cannot reach standing up. That is separate from the equipment premium: a 96% condensing furnace starts around 5.25 h to hang against 4 for an 80%, plus roughly $400 of material, and a heat pump around 6 h plus roughly $1,600. Attic + condensing stacks both.
What does the calculator not include?
It is not a Manual J, a load calculation, or an HVAC design, and picking 100,000 BTU here is not a finding that the house needs it — sizing is your load calc, not this page's. It also does not price recurring maintenance contracts, ductless mini-split installs, water-heater replacement, or standby generators; those are different jobs with their own tools. This prices a furnace or heat-pump changeout: the unit, where it sits, the coil, the gas, and the duct that is not in the coupon.
Why isn't a 20% margin the same as adding 20% to my cost?
Margin here is a share of the final price — price = total cost ÷ (1 − margin) — which is how the homeowner's number reads and how your books read it. Overhead is a separate markup on direct cost (labor + material + travel and equipment), applied before margin and never to itself or to profit. Marking a $6,000 cost up 20% gives $7,200, which is only a 16.7% margin; a 20% target margin gives $7,500. Across a heating season that gap is several installs.
Is my pricing data uploaded anywhere?
No. No account and no network requests — every wage, material cost, and price stays in this browser. A share link encodes only the inputs you choose into the address bar and is never sent to us. The business details saved for the printed proposal live in this browser's local storage, and "Forget my business details" clears them. The optional local usage counter records only which features were used and the day, never your costs or prices, and the footer checkbox turns it off.