The AHRI’s (Air Conditioning, Heating, & Refrigeration Institute) directory is an awesome tool & can even be considered a god-send by many. Why & what is it?
The AHRI is a globally recognized and industry testing & certification program which produces a certificate much like the NFRC label you would see on a window. However unlike a sticker placed on the window which easily gets scraped off, you can pull up the model number off of AHRI’s website to get all the specs you may require.
This is a screen shot for all the equipment you can look up (and then some)
Using the Directory to look up information:
This is a typical screen of all the ways you can look up information in the directory (in this case a furnace)
This is a picture taken of a Lennox Furnace’s label which fortunately is easily read (not all of them are & this is where the god send part comes in as you can use wild cards when looking up equipment).
In this case I simply entered the first 9 digits & the corresponding info that shows up. For most of us in the energy auditing &/or modeling fields the number we mainly care about is circled & that is the AFUE number.
More than just an AFUE, SEER, or EF lookup tool:
As you may have noticed from the original “search” screen there are numerous other ways to pull up equipment specs & you can even lock it down to a specific manufacturer. In this case I used the search to show that not all equipment is just a straight 92 AFUE & instead some equipment is now rated higher using decimals (the black circle). With that are you looking for a 92.1 AFUE furnace with maybe an ECM motor (maybe for a rebate?) well then here are two that qualify…
Looking for an AC unit with a specific cooling capacity, which manufacturers offers a 97 AFUE furnace, a specific type of boiler, or… well then you might want to consider going to the AHRI directory first before spending hours calling all your suppliers.