With a continued focus across the United States to reduce energy use, pool owners should be aware that heat pump pool and spa heaters bearing the AHRI Certified mark have passed AHRI energy tests. 

Basing the size of a pool heater on unreliable performance ratings could impact the pool's temperature, length of your swimming season and amount of time it takes to heat the pool," said Stephen Yurek, president of the Air Conditioning, Heating, and Refrigeration Institute.

"To provide an assurance of product performance to their customers, manufacturers of these products last year launched a voluntary performance certification program through AHRI to have their products' efficiency ratings scrutinized by an independent third party."
 
 Manufacturers who have their equipment certified must maintain tight and rigid quality control practices in their product manufacturing operations because AHRI randomly selects their products and tests them annually. Manufacturers who don't participate in AHRI's certification program may only perform a one-time test on a single model to determine their performance ratings.
 
 If a model when tested does not achieve the manufacturer's efficiency claims, the efficiency ratings for the entire product line must be changed and those ratings are listed in the AHRI Directory of Certified Product Performance.

Yurek says seven major manufacturers of heat pumps for pools and spas are participating in the year-old program. AHRI is hoping to someday achieve participation by all manufacturers of those products.