Reddit Reddit reviews How Your House Works: A Visual Guide to Understanding and Maintaining Your Home, Updated and Expanded

We found 9 Reddit comments about How Your House Works: A Visual Guide to Understanding and Maintaining Your Home, Updated and Expanded. Here are the top ones, ranked by their Reddit score.

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How Your House Works: A Visual Guide to Understanding and Maintaining Your Home, Updated and Expanded
How Your House Works A Visual Guide to Understanding and Maintaining Your Home Updated and Expanded
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9 Reddit comments about How Your House Works: A Visual Guide to Understanding and Maintaining Your Home, Updated and Expanded:

u/TheTim · 17 pointsr/HomeImprovement

I highly recommend How Your House Works: A Visual Guide to Understanding and Maintaining Your Home.

It explains all the basic home ownership maintenance stuff in very simple terms, with pictures and easy-to-follow explanations.

u/Sh1tPosterr · 9 pointsr/HomeImprovement

First, I think it's admirable what you want to do and I'm sorry for the loss of your brother.

Now, if you're serious about this, you first need go consider whether there is any point to it. If you update a room, are your parents just going to let it go to hell again?

If you decide it's worth it, you can learn to be handy. Be confident to try things, but watch videos so you understand how it's supposed to go and know your limitations. Get help with anything structural and with utilities if you're changing anything (i.e., maybe you can handle replacing an old light switch or receptacle with the same type of switch or receptacle, but don't try to rewire a whole room unless you get an electrician to inspect the work before you reenergize). In the end, it's not the end of the world if you don't make it look quite as nice as a professional might, but you don't want to burn the house down or damage the structure.

If you want to get started on the basics, keep subbed go this site for ideas and questions. If you're a total newbie, I'll recommend this book. It'll give you a solid visual representation plus a description of how the systems in a house work.

u/getElephantById · 2 pointsr/HomeImprovement

I second Youtube, but I never really trust any one video, I have to watch a bunch of them and then go for whoever seems most trustworthy. It is nice to have a single expert resource you can turn to frequently.

I really, strongly recommend How Your House Works by Charlie Wing. It's got great cutaway illustrations for common features of the home, and he explains how they work and interact with each other. It's interesting to read, and also a good reference. It's written for beginners, and would be a nice way to start even if you intended to go into greater depth with some other book.

u/mmm_burrito · 2 pointsr/HomeImprovement

Get this book. Very simple visual explanations of what is involved in the systems that make up your home. It won't teach you how to do everything, but it will give you a solid grasp of the fundamentals of a wide range of subjects.

u/falconPancho · 1 pointr/HomeImprovement

The lack of ventilation would point to negligence. Negligence type events aren't typically covered, it doesn't matter if you didn't know. This is a common book people recommend for first time home owners. A house isn't typically cheaper than rent, its just not throwing away your money since at the end you have something to sell. http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/1118099400?pc_redir=1397706695&robot_redir=1

u/DWShimoda · 1 pointr/MGTOW

>I want to learn to repair and maintain as much as I can myself so I don't have to depend on anyone.

So budget a $100 or so for the next year with a plan to get a couple of good illustrated guides like this "Fix-It-Yourself" along with other DIY and books like "How (the stuff in) Your House Works" -- think of it not only as "emergency" information, but that the knowledge you gain from it will (even if you don't end up DIY'ing everything) probably STILL save you money by at least making you not a complete idiot/mark for contractors to screw over -- and it's even sort of "entertaining" to read through/look at (each book costs around the same as buying a round of drinks, or taking a date to a movie -- and if you're at all "geeky/techy" type, you'll probably MORE enjoyment from just flipping through the book & looking at the pictures, LOL -- more than most movies anyway.)

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EDIT: Note I'm not really recommending those specific linked books -- just using them as examples of the different types of "photo-filled or illustrated-picture" guidebook things that are out there. I always find it ironic that people will often balk at spending $20 to $40 on a solid "basic knowledge/reference book" like that, but will then turn right around and rather thoughtlessly blow the very same $20 or $40 (or more) on some other entirely pointless/trivial crap (like booze at a local bar, or a single viewing of some bullshit blockbuster film crap), from which they learn/gain absolutely nothing of real value.

For probably only a couple of hundred bucks total, you can build a whole "shelf-full" -- a "home DIY reference library" covering everything from basic electrical work to masonry to plumbing, etc -- and across your life that info (assuming you use it) will easily save you multiple times its original cost.

u/jonathanrdt · 1 pointr/HomeImprovement

This is a great book: How Your House Works: A Visual Guide to Understanding and Maintaining Your Home, Updated and Expanded https://www.amazon.com/dp/1118099400

u/pirateofspace · 1 pointr/needadvice

http://www.amazon.com/How-Your-House-Works-Understanding/dp/1118099400/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1396910499&sr=1-2&keywords=home+maintenance

Buy a book like this. If you go to Barnes and Noble or another big-ass book store, there will literally be an entire shelf (or more) of books devoted to explaining the basics of how your house works.

Then find a good contractor or handyman for when shit goes wrong. Ask family, neighbors, check Yelp reviews, whatever works for you. A good tradesman will patiently answer your questions and explain what went wrong, how and why he'll fix it, and what you can do in the future to prevent more problems. Once you find a keeper though, show some respect and don't "shop around" for quotes and then try to negotiate the price on every single thing. Knowing how to talk to and work with tradesmen will get you far.