About
Who writes this, and how it is researched.
At DIY Repair Guide, we publish reference material for the parts of a house that break. There are currently 24 guides, covering diagnosis, the dimensions and code limits things are built to, and what the common repairs cost.
How the Guides Are Built
Every guide starts from a question people actually search for, and the structure follows from what answering it requires. Diagnostic pages work from the symptom, because the symptom is all you have when you go looking. Reference pages lead with the number or the chart. Cost pages break a price into its parts, so the quote you receive can be compared against something.
Where a code requirement is quoted, the page names the standard it comes from and links to the body that publishes it. Codes are adopted locally and amended locally, so a figure that is correct nationally may not be correct where you are. Every page that touches code says so.
Why Everything Is Drawn, Not Photographed
There are no photographs on this site. That is deliberate. A photograph of a water heater tells you nothing about why yours is leaking. A cutaway showing the five places it can leak from, with what each one means and costs, answers the question you arrived with.
The same reasoning applies to a three-way switch, a tape measure face and a joist span. Where a drawing answers the question better than prose, there is a drawing, and it is drawn for that page rather than borrowed.
What We Will Not Do
We will not tell you a job is straightforward when it involves gas, a service panel, or water above a finished ceiling. Some guides here end by telling you to call someone, because that is the correct answer and softening it would be worse than useless.
We do not take payment for placement, run sponsored reviews, or maintain a roster of contractors to refer you to. The cost pages exist so you can judge a quote, not so we can send you somewhere.
Where the Figures Come From
Cost ranges are typical US figures assembled for orientation rather than quotation, and they will not match every market. They exist so you can tell whether a quote sits inside the normal range, which is a different question from what your specific job should cost.
Corrections
We would rather hear that a number is wrong than leave it wrong. If a figure does not match what you have been quoted, or a code requirement differs where you live, tell us on thecontact page and we will check it.