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Use the Cost Bridge Table

The Cost Bridge Table is a section of the LCC tab that prices the proposed improvements. It matches the equipment and building envelope in a proposed model against a reviewed cost catalog and adds up the incremental cost, which you can then send to the lifecycle cost calculation.

Who can use it

The Cost Bridge Table is gated by the Can edit costs permission:

  • Staff always see and edit it.
  • External reviewers see it only when staff turn on their per-viewer Can edit costs toggle. Without that toggle, a reviewer never sees the section.

Editing the global cost catalog itself (the seeded cost rows) stays staff-only and happens in the Django admin. The controls described here change the selections for this analysis only.

Choose the proposed slot

The table prices one proposed model at a time. Select which proposed slot you are pricing. The table walks that model's equipment and building envelope and fills in a quantity for each row it can match.

Where quantities come from

Each catalog row names the model value it is priced by. Equipment rows are matched by library name; envelope rows are priced by an area or length from the model — walls, windows, doors, foundation walls, rim joists, ceilings, framed floors, and slabs. Ceilings can be priced by either ceiling surface area or roof deck area, and slabs by either surface area or perimeter, so a row can charge for the measure that actually applies. A few quantities are derived rather than read directly: foundation wall area is the wall's perimeter times its height above and below grade, and an exterior-wall row can be priced net of the model's window area.

Two points to expect when reading the table:

  • If a surface-area row and a roof-deck row both match the same ceiling assembly, both are charged. That is deliberate — the rows are additive cost lines, not alternatives.
  • A component the model does not have, or a value it does not report, contributes $0 rather than an error. A framed-floor or slab library with no matching cost row is reported alongside the table's other unmatched-library notes.

Which model value each row uses is part of the staff-maintained catalog, not a per-analysis setting.

Pick a cost source

Each row gets a unit cost from a source. You set one source for the whole analysis, then optionally override individual rows:

  • Source for the analysis — choose MEEA or Tony as the cost source for the whole table.
  • Per-row source override — change a single row to Default (use the analysis-level source), MEEA, or Tony when one source fits that item better.
  • Per-row custom unit cost — type a reviewer-entered cost for a single row. A custom cost wins over both a per-row source override and the analysis-level source. Setting a row's source back to Default, MEEA, or Tony clears its custom cost.

Equipment and other cost toggles

Some costs are not detected from the model automatically — you turn them on per slot with toggle buttons. There is a static Instructions for Equipment Cost Buttons table above the toggles that maps each button to the model type it applies to.

The bolded toggles below are listed under the names that instructions table uses. The buttons themselves carry longer, code-cycle-specific labels — the ventilation button, for example, reads 2024 IECC Prescriptive/ERI TIMER CONTROL VENTILATION — so match on the equipment rather than on an exact string. Heating equipment and water heating are grouped descriptions rather than table entries: the instructions table has no furnace or water-heater row, and those buttons are labelled by the equipment itself (Furnace 95 AFUE 80k, Furnace 96 AFUE 80k, and the three water-heater labels).

  • Heating equipment (a 95 AFUE or 96 AFUE gas furnace),
  • AC — 15.2 SEER2 / 12 EER2,
  • Water heating (a gas tankless or one of the heat-pump water heaters),
  • Timer Control Ventilation,
  • Dimmer + Motion Lighting,
  • Smart WIFI Thermostat,
  • R-3 Pipe Insulation,
  • Duct Sealing,
  • Fully-Ducted Return Cavity,
  • Energy-Efficient Appliances, and
  • ERI Pathway — the Energy Rating Index pathway fee.

Pick the water heater and other equipment with these toggles rather than expecting the table to guess them. The furnace, air-conditioning, and water-heating buttons are mutually exclusive within their own group — turning one on clears the others, so a proposed model can never carry two furnaces, two air conditioners, or two water heaters at once. The remaining buttons toggle independently.

Some rows are computed when you toggle them rather than charged as a flat fee — for example, hot-water pipe insulation from the model's hot-water pipe length, and duct sealing from the proposed model's tested duct surface area.

Fully-ducted return cavity

Fully-Ducted Return Cavity works the same way but needs one number from you. Turning it on reveals % of baseline return area that was building cavity. Enter a percentage from 0 to 100; the tool charges the row's rate per square foot against that share of the baseline model's total return duct surface area, adding up the return areas of every distribution system in the baseline. The percentage describes the baseline house, so it is a single analysis-wide value rather than a per-slot one — change it once and every proposed slot using the toggle picks it up. The cost never counts toward the LCC Replacement Cost.

While the toggle is on, the row always appears in the breakdown even at $0, and it says why it is $0 — no baseline model selected, no percentage entered yet, or no return duct area in the baseline. If the baseline and proposed return areas differ, the table warns you and still charges based on the baseline figure.

Hide unmatched rows

A per-session Hide unmatched rows toggle collapses rows that have no quantity, so external reviewers see a shorter table. It is purely visual — totals never change, and it never hides the appliances or ERI-fee rows, which are controlled by their own toggles.

Apply the totals to the LCC tab

Two buttons move the table's results into the lifecycle cost inputs:

  • Apply to Net Measure Cost copies the table's incremental cost into the LCC tab's Net Measure Cost field.
  • Apply to LCC Replacement Cost copies the subtotal of the rows flagged as replacement costs (such as the gas furnace, gas tankless water heater, heat-pump water heater, and energy-efficient appliances) into the Replacement Cost field. When that subtotal is positive and the first replacement year is still blank, the action fills it in with a default of 15 years. It never overwrites a value you already entered.

Because both totals respond to the equipment toggles, turning a replacement-flagged equipment button on or off updates both the Net Measure Cost and the replacement subtotal.

Next step

After applying the costs, recalculate on the LCC tab and review the Results Dashboard.