How House Works

Editorial policy

Updated

Independence

How House Works is not a contractor, a lead-generation service or a manufacturer. No company pays for coverage or sees a page before it is published. Brand names identify equipment and nothing more.

AI tools and the check before publishing

We use AI tools to find documents, draft pages and write the site's code. The same rules apply to every page.

  1. A page starts from a set of primary documents. A fact without a source does not go on the page.
  2. We do not invent people or evidence: no made-up authors or licenses, no "we tested", no testimonials.
  3. Before publishing, a separate verification pass, also run with an AI tool, goes through the draft claim by claim against the sources. It compares code numbers, wording, figures, units, dates and model names. If anything does not match, the page is not published until it is fixed and checked again.
  4. Each page lists the documents it relies on, with page numbers where that helps you check.

Pages are signed "How House Works Editorial" and have not been reviewed by a licensed tradesperson. If we add human reviewers, their names and license details will appear on the pages they reviewed, and this policy will change to say so.

Which sources count

In order of weight:

  1. Codes and regulations: the National Electrical Code, rules published in the Federal Register, state agency pages.
  2. Manufacturer documents: installation and operation manuals, owner's manuals, specification sheets, service bulletins.
  3. U.S. government data and guidance from DOE, EIA, EPA, NREL and ENERGY STAR.
  4. Standards and certification bodies such as AHRI.

Blogs, forums and videos are never the source of a fact. They can lead us to a primary document or show which problems owners run into, and when we mention that, we say where it came from.

Safety

Water heaters, furnaces, generators and panels involve gas, combustion, high voltage and scalding water. We describe what the manufacturer allows an owner to check and mark the rest as work for a licensed professional. We do not publish instructions for opening, adjusting or taking apart gas valves, burners or gas piping; for work on equipment that contains refrigerant, which under EPA rules must be done by a technician withSection 608 certification; for working inside a live electrical panel; or for bypassing or disabling a safety device.

Dates on our pages

"Checked against sources" is the date the claims on a page were last compared with the documents. "Last changed" is the date of the last change to what the page says; fixing a typo does not count. "Data as of" is the version of the data a calculator or table uses. We do not move a date without doing the work behind it. Pages that depend on rules, incentives or prices are queued for regular re-checks.

Corrections

Tell us when something is wrong (see contact). We check the report against the source, fix the page, and record the fix on the corrections page with the date and what changed.

Advertising

There are no ads or affiliate links today. We plan to add display ads later; they will be labeled and kept apart from the content, and advertisers will have no say in what we publish. We will not add lead forms or sell reader data.