Knowledge/Accreditation and audits/The fact sheet and sizing advice you owe before they sign
The fact sheet and sizing advice you owe before they sign
Before the customer agrees, you owe them three things. The current consumer fact sheet. Clear, accurate advice on whether the product suits their home. And a straight answer on whether your proposed size matches the fact sheet. It covers residential reverse cycle jobs (Part 6 categories 6A, 6B and 6D to 6F) and water heating (Parts 1 and 3).
- When
- Before they agreenot at install, not after
- Applies to
- 6A, 6B, 6D to 6Fresidential reverse cycle, plus water heating Parts 1 and 3
- Three duties
- Give, inform, adviseall three
- In force since
- 31 May 2023sizing advice before install
What are the three duties?
- Give them the current fact sheetThat's the Victorian Energy Upgrades (VEU) Space Heating and Cooling Consumer Fact Sheet, or the Water Heating one, as published by DEECA (the Department of Energy, Environment and Climate Action). Current matters, so don't hand out a PDF you saved two years ago.
- Tell them whether it suits their houseClear and accurate, and based on their actual house. That's your judgement on site, not what the brochure says.
- Tell them whether your size matches the fact sheetThis is the easy one to miss. You have to say whether the size you're proposing is consistent with the size the fact sheet recommends. If you're deliberately going bigger or smaller, say so and say why.
And the timing is the hard part. All three happen before the customer agrees. Do them at installation and you haven't met the requirement.
What sizes does the fact sheet recommend?
| Floor area | Recommended capacity |
|---|---|
| Up to 20 m² | 2.5 to 3 kW |
| 21 to 40 m² | 3 to 5 kW |
| 41 to 60 m² | 5 to 8 kW |
| Over 60 m² | 8 kW and above |
| Bedrooms | Hot water storage |
|---|---|
| 1 to 2 | 150 to 225 L |
| 3 | 225 to 300 L |
| 4 or more | Over 300 L |
Be clear about what these are. They're the figures the scheme measures your advice against, not a load calculation. If a proper assessment of the house gives a different answer, you don't have to drop your own judgement. You just have to tell the customer about the difference.
Get today's fact sheet yourself
The energy.vic.gov.au site wouldn't let us read the fact sheets directly, so we checked them using Internet Archive copies from February 2026. The sizing figures above are the ones we confirmed from those copies.
Because you have to hand over the current fact sheet, open the official DEECA page yourself and take today's version. Don't rely on our numbers being this week's.
Working out whether to get accredited?
It's a real decision with real numbers on both sides, and most of the people offering advice make money whichever way you go.
Kevin has no stake in which way you go. Ask him.
Who this is for: small and medium HVAC contractors in Victoria. If you're a homeowner after a rebate or a repair, you need a licensed contractor, not us, and yours can point you the right way.
Related
- The register timing trap that kills finished jobsA certificate fails if the product isn't on the register when the certificate is created, not when you installed it. And the calculator isn't the check.
- What actually triggers an audit, and who pays for itThree different things get called an audit. One is routine and scheduled, one needs reasonable grounds, and one happens to every certificate you create.
- Everything the regulator can do to you, from a warning upFrom a warning up to an order to hand back certificates at 600 penalty units. Every step, its section number, and what it comes to in dollars.
- The two March 2026 cases, and what actually got them$4.2 million in certificates refused and one five-year ban. Exactly what the two businesses did, straight from the regulator's own media release.
Review date: 1 January 2027. Figures in this area change without much notice and this page carries some that will go stale. Every number above is dated and sourced so you can check it yourself. If you find something out of date here, tell us and we will fix it.