How Upvalley Heat Sources Its Figures
Upvalley Heat sources its figures from equipment makers' manuals and from utility, state and federal pages, opened and read directly, with a date on every rebate and rule.
Rechecked
Where the numbers come from
Numbers on this site come from the document that sets them. Altitude rules come from furnace and boiler installation manuals, such as Carrier's, Lennox's, Trane's and Navien's. Rebates come from the utility or program that pays them: Holy Cross Energy, Black Hills Energy, CORE and the Colorado Energy Office. Tax credits come from the IRS and the Colorado Energy Office. Safety advice comes from the CDC, CPSC, EPA, ready.gov and the U.S. Fire Administration, and climate figures from NOAA's 1991–2020 normals. Town elevations are USGS readings at each town's map point, for example Aspen at 7,890 feet.
Each page links its sources next to the claims they support and ends with a short note on what it is based on. Distributor copies, contractor blogs, forums and news stories are not used as sources.
Dates and changes
Every rebate, fee and rule carries the date it was read, for example "Black Hills Energy's 2026 rebate form (read October 2026)." Utility programs, tax credits and codes change, sometimes in the middle of a year: the federal 25C and 25D credits ended after December 31, 2025, and Colorado's single-family appliance rebates closed on August 1, 2026. Check the program itself before you buy. Each page shows the date it was last updated.
What is left out
When two sources disagree, the page says so and follows the more specific or more recent one; where the appliance's own manual differs from a general rule, the manual wins. Figures that could not be traced to a primary source are left out rather than estimated. That includes design temperatures without a published source, equipment prices, installation cost ranges, and any claim about how long a house stays warm without power. No equipment was tested for this site, and there are no reviews or ratings.
Corrections
Pages are rechecked when a utility or agency changes its program, and when a maker revises a manual the site relies on. When a figure turns out to be wrong or out of date, the page is corrected and its update date changes. The ownership of the site and the rules for its few partner links are on the ownership and links page, and what the site is and is not is on the about page.