About This Site

The subject here is narrow on purpose: the parts of a house that hold ground, shed water, take a load or carry waste away, plus the surfaces that get installed on top of them. Retaining walls, paving, outdoor shading, floors, roofs, large openings, sewer laterals, and the pests that arrive when any of those are wet.

How the pages are written

Every guide follows the same discipline, and it is short enough to state in full.

• Name the source of the rule. Where a figure comes from a code section, a standard or an industry programme, the page says which one, so you can check it and so you know what to search for locally.
• Say when it is local. American building codes are adopted and amended jurisdiction by jurisdiction. A page that pretends otherwise is misleading, so the text points to the building department whenever the answer genuinely lives there.
• Prefer the manufacturer instruction. For any specific product, the installation sheet in the box beats every general guide, including this one. That is stated rather than implied.
• No prices. Costs vary so widely between markets and specifications that a national average is worse than no number at all. Instead, the pages explain what moves a quote, so two proposals can be read against each other.
• No recommendations of companies, and no affiliate links or sponsored placement of any kind.
• Say what you should not do yourself. Several of these subjects have a genuine hazard line, and the pages draw it explicitly rather than leaving it to be inferred.

Who writes it

One editor, publishing as an individual and not as a business. That has an obvious limitation and it is worth being direct about it: this site is a careful reading of published standards, code text, manufacturer documentation and trade practice, not the report of a licensed professional who has seen your house. It is meant to make you a better informed client and a better informed do-it-yourselfer, and it is not a substitute for a survey, an engineer or an inspection.

What is deliberately out of scope

Anything where being roughly right is not good enough for a general reader. No medical content, no legal advice, no financial or insurance recommendations, no tax questions. Where those subjects touch a building topic, for example an insurance claim after storm damage, the page describes the process and stops short of telling you what to do.

Corrections

Errors get fixed rather than quietly deleted. If a figure here contradicts a code section, a standard or a manufacturer instruction, write to [email protected] with the page address, the sentence and the source, and the page will be corrected. The details of how that works, and the publishing information for the site, are on the contact page.

Where to start reading

If you are new here and something is wrong with the house, start with the order of works, because sequence decides more of a budget than any individual purchase. If the problem is outdoors, the retaining wall guide and the paver guide cover the base and drainage logic that everything else in a yard depends on. If drains are involved, begin with why tree roots damage sewer lines before reading anything about repair methods.