Terms of use

Best HVAC Schools is a directory. It publishes information about 151 accredited HVAC programs across 38 states, the licensing rules that apply in each, and federal wage data for the trade. Using the site means accepting these terms.

It is published as information, not as advice. We are not a school, not a licensing board, not an employer and not a placement service. We cannot enrol you, credential you or get you hired, and nothing here creates any relationship between you and us beyond your reading it.

Everything here comes from a public source and is linked to it: accreditation directories, federal IPEDS filings, the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and each school's own program page. Where a figure is not published by a source we can name, we leave it out rather than estimate it.

That does not make it current. Programs close, tuition rises, accreditation lapses and course lengths change, often without any announcement. A school page that was accurate when we read it can be wrong by the time you read us. Confirm anything you intend to act on with the school itself.

Every state page shows the date its licensing research was verified against the state board or statute. Treat that date as the limit of what we are claiming.

The state pages describe licensing rules read from statutes, administrative codes and municipal ordinances. That research is careful and it is sourced, but it is journalism rather than legal advice, and we are not qualified to give you the latter.

Licensing law in this trade is genuinely contradictory in places. Several state pages on this site record a board's published summary disagreeing with the statute it is meant to summarise, or a city ordinance naming a credential the state does not issue. Where that happens we quote both and say we are not resolving it.

Before you enrol anywhere, apply for anything, or rely on a rule described here, confirm it with the board or authority that issues the credential. If a decision matters, take proper advice.

The national ranking and the order of schools on each state page are computed from public data using the five factors described on the about page. The method is published so you can disagree with it.

A ranking is an opinion expressed through a formula. It reflects what we chose to measure and what data existed to measure it with, which is not the same as which program is right for you. A school ranked lower may suit you better on schedule, cost, travel or what your local employers actually hire from.

No school pays for its position and no school has been offered one. Paid links exist elsewhere on the site and are labelled where they appear.

Some links on this site are paid, and we may earn a commission when you use one. It never costs you anything extra. Paid placements are labelled where they appear, and they do not affect ranking order, which is computed from data rather than assigned.

Read the site, quote it with attribution, and link to it freely. What you may not do is scrape it wholesale to republish as your own directory, misrepresent our figures as something else, use it to harass anyone, or attempt to interfere with how it is served.

The underlying data is largely public and you are welcome to go to the sources, which is why every one of them is linked. What took the work is the reading, the checking and the writing, and that is what these terms protect.

The written analysis, rankings, page structure and design on this site belong to us. School names, logos and program titles belong to those institutions. Federal data from IPEDS and the Bureau of Labor Statistics is public domain and you may use it directly from those agencies.

Photographs of cities on the state pages are used under Creative Commons licences and each one names its author and licence beside it. Other photography is licensed stock.

This site is provided as it is, without warranty of any kind, express or implied. We do not warrant that it is complete, current or error free.

To the fullest extent the law allows, we are not liable for any loss arising from your use of this site or from reliance on anything published here, including any decision about where to train, what to spend, or where to seek a licence. Where liability cannot be excluded, it is limited to the amount you paid us to read the site, which is nothing.

This site links out constantly and by design, because a claim you cannot check is not worth much. Those destinations are not ours, we do not control what they publish, and a link is not an endorsement of anything beyond the specific fact it supports.

These terms may change as the site does. The date below shows when they last did, and continuing to use the site after that means accepting the current version.

Questions about these terms, corrections to anything published, or a rule we have got wrong, go to help@hakia.com.