What Is a CF3R Certificate of Verification?
The CF3R is the Certificate of Verification — completed by an independent third-party rater who tests the finished work on site and reports the result to the HERS registry as a pass or a fail.
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What it is for
Some Energy Code measures cannot be certified on paper. Whether a duct system actually leaks below a threshold, or whether insulation was genuinely installed to the standard claimed, can only be established by measuring it in the finished building. The CF3R records those measurements, tests and field-verification results.
It is completed by a rater who is independent of the installer, which is the point of it. The installer declares what was installed on the CF2R; the rater verifies it.
Pass or fail, reported to the registry
The result goes to the HERS registry as a pass or a fail, and a fail is not a paperwork formality. It has to be corrected and re-verified before the project can rely on the measure. Where a design's compliance depends on a verified measure, a failed test means the building does not comply until the problem is fixed.
Registration
Prescriptive CF1R, CF2R and CF3R forms for projects with HERS measures are completed through a HERS provider's data registry rather than as loose documents, which is what ties the three stages together under one registration number.
How to avoid it becoming a problem
Two things. Identify at design stage whether any measure will need verification, because that is a scheduling commitment at the end of the build, not a document. And consider whether the design needs those measures at all — a ductless system, for instance, removes duct testing from the job entirely. Choosing a compliance route that avoids verification is a legitimate design decision, and it is much easier to take before construction than during it.