July HVAC Shipments Jump 20%; Heat Pumps Post Second-Best July on Record
Dale Resnick
A 30-year veteran of residential HVAC who's crawled through more attics than he can count. Dale writes the 'Duct Tape & Beyond' column and believes every compressor tells a story if you listen close enough.
U.S. manufacturers shipped 916,830 central air conditioners and air-source heat pumps in July, up 20.1% from 763,443 units a year earlier, according to AHRI's monthly equipment shipment report. Heat pumps accounted for 413,679 of that, a 17.6% gain and the second-highest July heat pump total in a series that goes back to 2010. Air conditioners came in at 503,151 units, up 22.3%.
Nearly every category AHRI tracks moved up.
Heat pumps took 45.1% of the combined cooling total, second only to July 2025 at 46.1%. That is the number worth watching over a two-year horizon rather than a two-month one. Cooling shipments have now risen year over year for six straight months, February through July, and heat pumps were up in all six. Air conditioners have a four-month streak.
Gas warm-air furnaces shipped 265,810 units, up 2.1%. Oil warm-air furnaces, a category most of the industry stopped thinking about years ago, shipped 2,681 units and rose 36.6%, the third-highest July total on record. Water heaters went the other way: gas storage down 2.5% to 333,499, electric storage down 3.9% to 385,594.
Distributors saw the same July. HARDI's TRENDS report put member sales up 6.7% on a comparable billing-day basis, the best monthly gain of 2026. July 2026 and July 2025 had the same number of billing days, so that is a clean comparison rather than a calendar artifact.
"The good report is not telling us much about the market," said Brian Loftus, HARDI's senior market analyst. Trailing 12-month growth was 2.7%. Loftus pointed out that the regional pattern lines up almost exactly with the weather: the strongest regions had the biggest cooling degree day increases, and the weakest regions had big cooling degree day declines. A hot July sells condensers, but it does not prove the market turned.
Days sales outstanding stayed under 37 days, comparable to July 2025. "The steady DSO indicates the market is not deteriorating," Loftus said. That is a far narrower claim than recovery, and he kept it narrow on purpose.
On the demand side he was blunt about what is holding things back. "The housing market has been depressed, like consumer sentiment which is under pressure from stubborn inflation," Loftus said. "The market is due for a change. We would have more confidence that signs of improvement could endure if inflation and interest rates would subside."
A 20% shipment month is equipment moving into the channel, not equipment landing on a roof curb. Where it shows up in the field is better availability on common tonnages in September and October, and distributors who are suddenly willing to talk about stocking programs again after two years of running thin.
Heat pump share has refused to drop since 2023. Forty-five percent of cooling replacements arriving as heat pumps means a growing installed base that a service department will eventually meet in heating mode, with reversing valves, defrost boards and low-ambient behavior a straight-cool tech has not had to diagnose. That trend has been running long enough that heat pumps have outsold gas furnaces in recent annual counts, a shift ACHR News has tracked across the same AHRI data, and it was there in AHRI's February 2026 report too.
Cost pressure hasn't gone anywhere either. The Section 232 metal tariff changes still sit underneath every coil and cabinet price a distributor quotes.
August shipment data lands in mid-October, with the August TRENDS report arriving around the same time. Both get compared against a much weaker 2025 base, which means another strong headline number that may not mean much on its own.
Sources
Air-Conditioning, Heating, and Refrigeration Institute. (2026). "Monthly Shipments." AHRI
ACHR News. (2026). "AHRI Shipment Report Shows 6 Months of Heat Pump Growth." ACHR News
ACHR News. "Heat Pumps Surge Ahead: What HVAC Contractors Need to Know Now." ACHR News
HVAC/P. (2026). "HARDI Distributors Report 6.7% Revenue Increase in July." Sept. 3, 2026. hvacpproducts.com
HARDI. (2026). "HVAC Trends in 2 Minutes: July 2026 Data." Sept. 2, 2026. hardinet.org