Dana Okafor

Dana owns a small residential HVAC contracting business and has spent eleven years in the trade, the last seven running her own shop. The company writes between 250 and 400 replacement and new-system estimates a year across roughly 60 percent forced-air and 40 percent heat pump installs, with a growing share of mini-split conversions as homeowners electrify. She holds an ACCA contractor membership and stays current on the federal incentive landscape because half her sales conversations now involve heat-pump tax credits and state rebate programs that change quarterly.

Dana is the person on her team who sits down with the kitchen-table spreadsheet and explains why the heat pump option that costs $3,000 more upfront actually costs $2,200 less over five years once the IRA 25C credit, the state rebate, and the lower operating cost on natural gas at current rates are folded in. That sales conversation is the entire reason the cost-and-ROI calculators on this site exist. She reviews them against the quote spreadsheets she actually hands homeowners, so the numbers the calculator returns line up with the numbers a working contractor would put in a proposal.

Dana reviews every tool in the Cost & ROI category (HVAC replacement cost, heat pump vs gas furnace, operating cost, payback period, rebate finder, replace vs repair) plus the thermostat schedule savings calculator. Cost data gets re-verified quarterly against current quote aggregator pulls, and rebate program data gets updated whenever a state launches or pauses its HEAR funding.