Home Repair Books
Your home is a big financial asset. Protecting this investment is a priority or you wouldn't be here, learning about the best home repair books. With preventive maintenance, you can avoid lots of problems. You can save money on utility bills and fewer repairs. You may also extend the life of many home systems with proper maintenance, delaying the cost of replacing an appliance, hot water heater or roof.
Home Repair Books to Guide You
What's important for homeowners to understand is your top priority is making decisions about your house. Only you can decide if you'll replace your roof this year or remodel a bathroom. There's no perfect home maintenance strategy (here's mine) but after running a handyman business for eight years, I have learned what types of problems need to be fixed now!
So here are my favorite home repair books, plus a few others so you can pick the one you like best. The Ultimate Guide to Home Repair and Improvement has been my go to resource book since starting my handyman business.
If you want to buy any of them, here are links to each on Amazon (prices under $20/book). Not sure if this is a good investment? Start with one book, Home Repair and Improvement. You'll quickly see how easy the book is to read, explaining concepts and terminology before diving into nitty, gritty repairs. My favorite page is the one explaining the parts of the roof and how they're layered.
Ultimate Guide to Home Repair & Home Improvement
Ultimate Guide Wiring &
Home AutomationUltimate Guide to Plumbing
Prefer Picking Your Own Home Repair Books?
Some people just want the answer while others want to make their own decision. I get it and for those who want to look a a few books before making their selection, here are a few more choices. To help you with your research, here's the technique I've used over the years:
- Visit a large bookstore that carries multiple authors for a given topic. Where once I'd pick my books at Home Depot or Lowe's, most don't have a good book section anymore. So these days I go to Barnes & Noble, or you can order several books from Amazon and return the ones you don't want.
- Scan the table of contents and see if it feels comfortable. Do they introduce topics like safety, materials and tools, and use words you understand. I especially like concepts like the Plumbing books introduction to “Working with Water Piping” and Wiring's “Fuse and Circuit Breaker Capacities”.
- Pick one or two projects you have some knowledge of, and use these to compare books. It shouldn't take long for you to see that one would be easier to follow than all the others. For plumbing, I compared a garbage disposal repair.
- For home repairs, look for how well they explain what might have caused the problem. That's because you always want to fix a problem at the source before repairing the damage it caused.
What's fascinating is how the books promoted the number of photos and illustrations included. That's really important because the right photos/illustrations can help you build a mental image of how the puzzle fits together, but make sure the photos are big enough to be useful.
The Complete Photo Guide to Home Repair (2000 How-To Photos) The Complete Do-it-Yourself Manual Newly UpdatedBlack & Decker Complete Photo Guide to Home Repair
Home Repair Books to Keep Your Home Dry
Water is something we take for granted until there's a problem. Whether you want to learn how to fix basic plumbing problems or not, having one of these books on hand will help you understand how fresh water flows throughout your house, and gray water leaves your home. Your #1 priority is to learn how to shut the water off when there is a problem.
Plumbing: Expert Advice
from Start to FinishUltimate Guide to Plumbing
in Your HomePlumbing: From Basic Repairs to Advanced Projects
Understanding Home Electrical Is Important
You know electricity is what turns the lights on. More important though, is understanding how electricity is changing our lives at home. Digital devices from computers to smart phones, and new products like Amazon's Echo, all run on electricity. Home automation in its infancy, is connecting these devices so you've got to understand how all these wires work.
Ultimate Guide to Wiring
for Your HomeComplete Guide to Wiring & Electrical CodesHow to Diagnose & Fix
Everything Electronic
