How the prices on this site are built
No public body publishes an official price for a roof, a water heater or a furnace, and this site does not pretend otherwise. What exists are measurements: what owners told the Census Bureau they paid, what each trade earns in each state, how contractors split their revenue between materials and labor, and what energy costs. Every price on the site is assembled from those measurements with one formula, shown below, and every result is a range rather than a single figure.
1. The national range: jobs reported by homeowners
The American Housing Survey 2023 (Census Bureau for HUD, national public use file, version 1.1) asks owners about home improvement jobs done in the two previous years: type of job, cost, year, whether someone in the household did most of the work, and how it was paid. We keep jobs done by professionals, weight them with the survey weights, and take the 25th percentile, the median and the 75th percentile. Each cost is moved to August 2026 dollars with the CPI-U of its year: the latest index used is 334.980.
| Job | Professional jobs in survey | 25th / median / 75th (August 2026 $) | Economic Census industry | Labor share L | BLS trade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Roof replacement | 2,217 | $7,046 / $11,446 / $17,590 | Roofing contractors | 24.9% | Roofers |
| Water heater replacement | 1,786 | $1,030 / $1,607 / $2,349 | Plumbing, heating, and air-conditioning contractors | 36.1% | Plumbers, pipefitters and steamfitters |
| Central air conditioning | 2,011 | $4,617 / $7,696 / $10,994 | Plumbing, heating, and air-conditioning contractors | 36.1% | Heating, air conditioning and refrigeration mechanics and installers |
| Furnace or other built-in heating | 1,591 | $3,434 / $5,723 / $8,585 | Plumbing, heating, and air-conditioning contractors | 36.1% | Heating, air conditioning and refrigeration mechanics and installers |
| Fence | 1,117 | $2,199 / $4,397 / $7,665 | All other specialty trade contractors | 29.8% | Fence erectors |
| Deck, porch or patio | 742 | $3,663 / $8,012 / $16,565 | Framing contractors | 24.2% | Carpenters |
| Driveway or walkway | 978 | $2,175 / $4,397 / $8,654 | Poured concrete foundation and structure contractors | 29.0% | Cement masons and concrete finishers |
| Year of the job | CPI-U annual average | Factor to August 2026 |
|---|---|---|
| 2021 | 270.970 | 1.236 |
| 2022 | 292.655 | 1.145 |
| 2023 | 304.702 | 1.099 |
For roofs, the survey also gives the living area of the house, in seven groups from under 1,000 to 4,000 square feet or more; the roof calculator uses the group of the size you enter, for one-family detached homes.
2. The regional level: the Census division
Owners report very different prices in different parts of the country. For each of the nine Census divisions with at least 60 professional jobs of a given type in the survey, we compute the ratio of the division median to the national median; divisions with fewer jobs keep the national level (ratio 1). Every state takes the ratio of its division.
3. The state adjustment: only the labor share moves
Within a division, states differ mainly in what labor costs. The 2022 Economic Census gives, for each type of contractor, payroll and employer-paid benefits as a share of the value of construction work: that share is L. The Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics of May 2025, released on May 15, 2026, give the mean hourly wage of the matching trade in each state; we divide it by the division's mean, weighted by each state's employment in that trade. The state price is then:
price = national quartile × division ratio × ((1 − L) + L × state wage ÷ division wage)
When BLS does not publish a state's wage for a trade, the ratio is set to 1 and the page says so. Results are rounded to the nearest $10.
Worked example: a roof in Ohio
The national median roof job is $11,446. Ohio is in the East North Central division, whose ratio is 1.000. Roofing contractors' labor share is 24.9% (payroll 19.8% plus benefits 5.0%). Ohio roofers earned a mean of $26.76 an hour, 0.870 times the division mean. The factor is 1.000 × ((1 − 0.249) + 0.249 × 0.870) = 0.968, so the typical Ohio roof job is $11,080, with a range of $6,820 to $17,020.
4. Material quantities
The concrete, gravel, mulch, paint, drywall and roofing calculators are geometry plus figures printed by manufacturers or public agencies: bag yields from the Quikrete data sheet, ordering overage from the NRMCA, aggregate weights from the Wisconsin DOT specifications, mulch coverage from Clemson Extension, paint spread rates from Benjamin Moore and Valspar data, drywall accessories from USG, shingle bundles from Owens Corning. We do not publish store prices: they change weekly and by store, and retailer sites cannot be read reliably. Each tool lets you type the price on the shelf tag.
5. Energy and solar
Electricity prices are the residential averages of the EIA Electric Power Monthly for January to July 2026, and average consumption and bills come from EIA-861 for 2024. Gas, propane and heating oil prices are EIA averages over October 2025 to March 2026; where EIA does not survey a state, the U.S. average is used. Heat contents come from EIA, default heating loads from RECS 2020, efficiency minimums from 10 CFR 430.32. Solar output per kW is computed with PVWatts for the largest city of each state (20° tilt, south facing, 14% losses). PVWatts' free access allowed 10 states; for the others we take the yearly sunshine on a roof tilted at latitude minus 15° from NASA POWER and multiply it by the median performance ratio PVWatts gives in the states computed both ways (0.801); in those states the two methods differ by at most 10%. Solar prices start from the EnergySage state medians published in the NLR Spring 2026 Solar and Storage Industry Update; the high end adds the gap between New York's 2025 reported prices (NYSERDA, median $3.85/W) and New York's median quote, a factor of 1.426.
6. What this method cannot do
- It cannot see your house: pitch, layers, rot, access, brand and permit fees move a real quote.
- The job survey covers 2021 to 2023 and records the type of job, not its size or material (except house size for roofs). General inflation (CPI) is used to update it, not the price of shingles or copper.
- Division ratios rest on tens to a few hundred jobs each and on rounded answers; they are less precise than the national figures.
- The labor share is an average over each contractor industry, residential and commercial work together.
- Moving prices use the revenue that moving companies earn per dollar of payroll, an average that includes long-distance hauling; your hours are your own estimate.
- Incentives, utility rebates and net metering rules vary by state and utility and are not modeled, except the end of the federal 25C and 25D credits on December 31, 2025 (IRS).
7. Testing and updates
The data files are rebuilt by a script from the official downloads; automated tests check the engines on known cases (bag yields, pitch factors, the Ohio example above, the order of every quartile) before each release. The site is reread when BLS publishes the next wage survey (spring), when the Census publishes the next American Housing Survey, and monthly for energy prices. Corrections are welcome through the contact page.