Editorial policy

This describes the rules a figure has to clear before it appears anywhere on the site, and what happens when it cannot clear them. It is written down because a rule that lives only in someone’s head loses to convenience the first time it is inconvenient.

Who writes this

Andrew Flores is responsible for the site's research, calculations, source verification, and corrections. Every registered figure must clear the rules below before publication; the rules are written down so evidence and assumptions remain distinguishable.

Admitting a figure

Every number enters through one module and carries seven fields: the value, its unit, the human name of the source, the source URL, a verbatim quote containing the figure, the date it was retrieved, and how it was accessed. A figure missing any of those does not get in. A page requesting a figure that does not exist in the register fails the build rather than rendering blank, so there is no path by which a bare literal reaches a reader.

Where a source blocks automated readers — several cost publishers do — the figure is verified against a named archive capture of the exact cited URL, and the capture timestamp is recorded. Quoting a bot-walled page from memory is not permitted, because a figure nobody can re-check is indistinguishable from one somebody made up.

The three labels

Sourced figures are quoted verbatim from the cited page. The quote is stored, not paraphrased, so a later reader can see whether we read the sentence correctly.

Derived figures are arithmetic on sourced data. The arithmetic is written out in full on the methodology page. A derived figure never appears without its operation being visible somewhere on the site.

Assumed figures are ours, with no source behind them. They are disclosed at the point of use — on the control itself where a control drives them — as well as in a dedicated section of the methodology page. There are only a handful of these and keeping the count low is a deliberate constraint on what this site is willing to compute.

Freshness

A figure older than 183 days from its retrieval date blocks a new deployment. That threshold is read directly from the module that enforces it rather than copied into a checker, so the rule and its enforcement cannot drift apart. Published sources change quietly and often; the whole point of recording a retrieval date is that it eventually expires and forces a re-read.

Freshness of a figure is not the same as currency of a claim. A cost article retrieved today may itself have been last updated over a year ago, and where that is true the site says so beside the figure. Both dates matter and conflating them would flatter the data.

When two sources disagree

They get printed side by side and neither one wins by default. Averaging two figures that are far apart manufactures a precision neither supports, and quietly picking the one that suits the page is worse. Where the disagreement is severe enough that no honest number exists — as it is for electrical panel upgrades — the site prints both, adds neither to any total, and tells you to get a professional opinion.

Where one source is primary and the other is a survey, the primary document governs and the survey is shown for orientation only. A published municipal fee schedule outranks a national cost estimate about permit fees every time.

Corrections

A correction that names a page, a figure and a better source is acted on ahead of any new work. When a figure changes, the register changes, and every page that displays it changes in the same deploy — there is no separate list of numbers to update and forget. Where a correction changes something a reader may have relied on, the change is described in the note field of the affected figure rather than being applied silently.

The register currently holds 108 figures. Every one is listed with its source and retrieval date on the methodology page, which is generated from the module rather than maintained by hand.

Independence

There is no affiliate relationship, sponsorship, or paid placement with any manufacturer, installer, retailer or lead-generation service, and no page recommends a brand or a contractor. If advertising is ever added it will be clearly distinguishable from the content, it will never be permitted to influence a figure or a recommendation, and the privacy policy will be updated in the same deploy that adds the code rather than afterwards.

What this site is not

It is not engineering advice and it is not a substitute for a load calculation on your actual house. It is a way to arrive at a contractor conversation already knowing roughly what the answer should look like and which questions have real money behind them.