Privacy Policy
Last updated: October 29, 2026
Home Energy Lab ("Home Energy Lab," "we," "us," or "our") is an independent educational website created by Daniil Hora. We provide interactive household utility calculators, information about energy consumption, and educational resources related to electricity, heating, cooling, natural gas, water, and household expenses.
This Privacy Policy explains what information may be collected when you use Home Energy Lab, how that information is used, and the choices available to you.
By using our website, you can review this policy to understand our data practices. Where consent is legally required, we will request it separately.
1. Information We Collect
Information You Provide
If you contact us, you may provide information such as your name, email address, message, or other details you choose to include.
We use this information to respond to inquiries, investigate reported issues, and communicate about your request.
Please do not submit sensitive personal information, payment credentials, or account passwords through our contact channels.
Calculator Inputs
Home Energy Lab calculators allow you to enter information such as electricity rates, appliance wattage, operating hours, water usage, natural gas consumption, and household utility expenses.
These inputs are used to generate estimates.
Calculations run in your browser. The numbers you enter are not sent to our servers and are not stored by us. If you use the "Add to My Home" feature, the devices you save are kept in your browser's local storage on your own device, so they can appear in the 3D house. You can remove them at any time by clearing this website's data in your browser.
Information Collected Automatically
When you visit the website, certain technical information may be collected by our hosting infrastructure or services used to operate the website.
Depending on the services enabled, this may include:
- IP address and approximate geographic location derived from it.
- Browser type, device type, and operating system.
- Pages requested and referring website addresses.
- Date and time of requests.
- Technical logs, security events, and error information.
- Cookie identifiers or similar information where applicable.
This information may be used to deliver the website, maintain security, diagnose technical issues, and understand site performance.
2. How We Use Information
We may use information collected through Home Energy Lab to:
- Operate and maintain the website.
- Provide calculator functionality.
- Respond to questions and feedback.
- Identify errors and improve website performance.
- Protect the website against abuse and unauthorized activity.
- Understand how visitors interact with our content, where analytics tools are enabled.
- Display and measure advertising, where advertising services are enabled and legally permitted.
- Comply with applicable legal obligations.
We do not require visitors to create an account to read our educational articles or access publicly available calculator pages.
3. Cookies and Similar Technologies
Cookies are small files that websites or third-party services may store on your device. Similar technologies can include local storage, pixels, and other identifiers.
Depending on the functionality and services enabled on Home Energy Lab, these technologies may be used for the following purposes.
Essential Technologies
Essential technologies support functionality such as security, consent preference storage, and other features necessary for the website to operate.
For example, we store your cookie choices in a first-party cookie and in local storage named hel-consent for up to 12 months, so we don't ask you again on every visit.
Analytics
If analytics services are enabled, they may help us understand website usage, page performance, and how visitors interact with our content.
We use Google Analytics 4, provided by Google LLC, to understand in aggregate which pages, calculators and guides are used and how the site performs.
Google Analytics loads only after you allow Analytics in Cookie Settings. Until then, no request is sent to Google Analytics and no analytics cookies are set. Once allowed, Google Analytics may set cookies such as _ga and _ga_<ID> (which can last up to two years) and may process information such as pages viewed, referring pages, device and browser details, and approximate location derived from your IP address.
You can withdraw consent at any time in Cookie Settings. You can also learn more in Google's Privacy Policy and How Google uses information from sites or apps that use its services, or use the Google Analytics opt-out browser add-on.
Advertising
If advertising is enabled, advertising providers may use cookies and similar technologies to deliver ads, measure their performance, prevent fraud, and, where permitted, personalize advertising.
You can review or change available choices through our Privacy Choices page and Cookie Settings control.
4. Google Advertising
Home Energy Lab may use Google AdSense to support the website through advertising.
At the time of this update, advertising is not active on Home Energy Lab. The points below describe how Google advertising works once it is enabled.
When Google advertising services are active:
- Third-party vendors, including Google, may use cookies to serve advertisements based on a visitor's previous visits to this website or other websites.
- Google's advertising cookies may enable Google and its partners to deliver advertising based on visits to Home Energy Lab and other websites.
- Google and other advertising technology providers may collect or receive information through cookies, IP addresses, web beacons, or similar technologies as part of providing advertising services.
- Depending on applicable law, user preferences, and advertising settings, ads may be personalized or non-personalized.
You can learn more about how Google uses information from websites that use its services:
How Google uses information from sites or apps that use its services
You may manage personalized advertising preferences through:
You can also learn about industry advertising choices at:
Opting out of personalized advertising does not necessarily prevent all advertisements from appearing.
When advertising is enabled, we will update this policy to list any advertising partners in addition to Google.
5. Third-Party Services
Home Energy Lab may rely on third-party providers for website hosting, infrastructure, analytics, security, and advertising.
These providers may process information according to their own privacy policies and the services they provide.
At present, Home Energy Lab relies on a website hosting provider to deliver its pages and, if you allow analytics, on Google Analytics (Google LLC). The site's fonts, 3D models, images, and calculator code are served from our own website, and pages do not load advertising services. We will update this section as providers are added.
Our website also contains links to external websites. We are not responsible for the privacy practices or content of those independently operated websites.
6. Data Retention
We retain personal information only for as long as reasonably necessary for the purposes described in this policy, subject to applicable legal, security, and operational requirements.
Different information may be retained for different periods. For example, contact correspondence, security logs, and analytics information may follow different retention schedules.
Contact messages are kept only as long as needed to respond to and follow up on your request. Technical logs kept by our hosting provider follow that provider's retention schedule, and Google Analytics data is kept according to the retention period set in our Google Analytics account. Cookie preferences are stored on your device for up to 12 months, and calculator entries are not stored by us at all.
7. Data Security
We take reasonable steps appropriate to the website and its infrastructure to protect information against unauthorized access, disclosure, alteration, or destruction.
However, no internet transmission, storage system, or security measure can be guaranteed to be completely secure.
8. Your Privacy Rights and Choices
Depending on where you live and which laws apply, you may have rights to:
- Request access to certain personal information.
- Request correction of inaccurate personal information.
- Request deletion of qualifying personal information.
- Object to or restrict certain processing.
- Withdraw consent where processing is based on consent.
- Opt out of certain uses or disclosures, including targeted advertising or the sale or sharing of personal information, where applicable.
- Exercise other rights provided by applicable privacy laws.
These rights may be subject to legal exceptions, verification requirements, and jurisdiction-specific limitations.
To learn more about available controls, visit Privacy Choices.
You may also contact us through our Contact page.
We will review privacy requests and respond as required by applicable law.
9. International Visitors
Home Energy Lab is intended primarily for readers in the United States but may be accessed from other countries.
Information processed through the website or its service providers may be transferred to or processed in countries other than your country of residence, where permitted by applicable law.
Where legally required, appropriate safeguards and consent mechanisms must be implemented.
10. Children's Privacy
Home Energy Lab provides general educational information about household utility expenses and is not directed specifically to children under 13.
We do not intentionally solicit personal information from children under 13.
If you believe a child has submitted personal information through our website, please contact us so that we can review the request and take appropriate action.
11. Changes to This Privacy Policy
We may update this Privacy Policy when our website features, technology providers, data practices, or applicable requirements change.
The updated policy will be published on this page with a revised "Last updated" date.
Where required by law, we will provide additional notice or obtain consent before implementing relevant changes.
12. Contact
Home Energy Lab is an independent project created and operated by Daniil Hora.
For privacy inquiries or questions about this policy, please use our Contact page and choose "Privacy request" as the topic.