How Your House Works: A Visual Guide to Understanding and Maintaining Your Home, Updated and Expanded Paperback Author: Charlie Wing | Language: English | ISBN:
1118099400 | Format: PDF, EPUB
How Your House Works: A Visual Guide to Understanding and Maintaining Your Home, Updated and Expanded Epub DownloadDownload How Your House Works: A Visual Guide to Understanding and Maintaining Your Home, Updated and Expanded Paperback Epub Download from with Mediafire Link Download Link
From the Back Cover
An easy-to-understand, richly illustrated guide to how everything in a house worksWhy is my faucet leaking, my toilet running, or my dishwasher refusing to start? Can I fix it myself? What's causing the heating system to smell bad or the foundation to crack? Do I need an air filtration system? Is the new "engineered lumber" as good as conventional wood? These are just a few examples of questions homeowners face when repairs are needed or when a new house or addition is being planned.
This new edition of How Your House Works uncovers the mysteries behind just about every major appliance and building element in your house. Clear "exploded" drawings show you exactly how these things should be put together and how they function—what to check if they don't work, and what you can do that might save you from calling in a professional.
The easy-to-understand pictures and explanations on every page get right to the point, helping you understand how things work, what can go wrong, and how to troubleshoot a problem.
Virtually everything in your house is included:
Electrical – circuit breakers and grounding, service, outlets, lamps, and fixtures
Heating and air conditioning – gas, electrical, and oil, ductwork and piping, thermostats, central and window AC units, humidifiers and dehumidifiers, and air filtering systems
Plumbing – kitchen and bath fixtures, piping, water heaters, traps and vents, septic tanks, and pumps and water softener systems (even sprinkler systems and swimming pool filters/heaters)
Major household appliances – from kitchen to laundry
Foundation, framing, doors, and windows – including issues like drainage and radon, types of framing and how it supports the house, and all types of doors and windows
Sustainability and beyond – covers sustainability and issues outside the house, as well as clock thermostats, ventless gas heaters, moisture and mold, and¿¿passive solar heating
This quick and easy guide will save you time and money, answer nagging questions, and help you keep your house running smoothly.
About the Author
The author of more than twenty books on home repair and improvement,
Charlie Wing is perhaps the most credible house-building teacher in the world. His writing and illustrations make complex home issues understandable. An MIT graduate, he developed and hosted a national PBS energy conservation series,
Housewarming with Charlie Wing, and served as primary editorial developer for Home Depot's branded 1-2-3 books.
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- Paperback: 208 pages
- Publisher: RSMeans; 2 edition (February 28, 2012)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 1118099400
- ISBN-13: 978-1118099407
- Product Dimensions: 10.8 x 8.5 x 0.4 inches
- Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
What's problematic about DIY guides is that they're either much too technical for the laymen it purports to be written for, or the text leans to the other end of the spectrum and ends up an overly-simplified outline of the subject, never quite diving deep enough into the material. "How Your House Works" falls into the latter category, as the text covers a wide range of material but never rests long enough on one topic to be of much use. The subtitle "A visual guide to understanding and maintaining your home" is also somewhat misleading because the book offers much more in the way of 'understanding' and precious little in the way of 'maintaining'. However, the book is wonderfully packed with illustrations detailing how several dozen devices within your home operate. The maintenance and troubleshooting suggestions are relegated to a box on the side of the page. The material within those boxes range from utterly useless to reasonably helpful.
While I can understand how a dishwasher works, that still leaves me far from knowing how to maintain one. The brief tips on troubleshooting and maintenance are often helpful only to a small degree. The text recommends dishwasher owners periodically "Remove the spray arms and clean the spray holes" without offering help as to exactly how to clean them. There are a myriad of ways to do this, with some methods being significantly more effective than others, and the text often lacks clear detail in these areas. Other tips are even less helpful, such as "Make sure you are using dishwasher detergent, not dishwashing detergent". If that's your problem, toss the book in the trash and leave your home maintenance/repair to your local repair shops. In fact, perhaps you should hand wash your dishes.
This book was exactly what I was looking for. I've been a homeowner for 17 years and I'm by NO means a DYI expert. But, I am more than willing to try to figure something out myself and THEN call a professional if I screw it up too badly. Thankfully, those times have been far and few between. I don't do electrical stuff, I leave that up to my husband who was trained in the Navy how to do that stuff. But will I take out an old sink and put in a new one while my husband is at work? You betcha. And yes, the sink works perfectly, not a drip or clog in sight. Have I knocked down the walls to our foyer closet because I was sick of the kids throwing all of their crap in there and never shutting the doors correctly (which were the 70's style sliding doors that were always falling off of their tracks anyway). Yes, yes I have done that. Now we have a much more open foyer and a nice, neat place to put shoes, book bags and jackets, thanks to my - - willingness to learn new things.
However, in my creative endeavors around the house, there have been times where I really needed a clear, easy-to-follow, well illustrated and straight to the point guide to help me understand what exactly was behind the wall I was getting ready to knock down. I bought a few books, I looked stuff up on the internet, etc. It got really confusing and I often got distracted by other clutter online and we ended up sleeping in a film of drywall dust that night.
This book is perfect for my needs. It has simple pictures and diagrams on how things work. Things like your garbage disposal, hot water heater, basic plumbing, what happens when you flush the toilet (and why the stuff might be coming back OUT instead of DOWN), etc.
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