What is worth owning
A small number of tools turn up again and again across these guides. None of them is specialist, and between them they cover most of the jobs on this site that people otherwise pay a call-out for.
No prices on this page. Each item links to the guide where its cost is already quoted with a named source, so there is one figure per job rather than two that can drift apart.
The tools
- A wet/dry shop vacuum
- Clears a blocked condensate line from the outdoor end in about ten minutes, which is the single job on this site that most often gets paid for unnecessarily.AC drain line clogged →
- A dryer vent brush kit
- Reaches the length of the duct, where lint actually accumulates. The vent is the answer far more often than the dryer is, and it is also the fire risk.Clothes not drying →
- A drum auger
- Clears the arm behind the trap, which is where a kitchen blockage usually sits. Chemical cleaner makes that job worse rather than better.Kitchen sink clogged →
- A garden hose you can attach indoors
- A water heater flush needs nothing else. Sediment left in the tank is what shortens its life and makes it noisy.No hot water →
- A non-contact voltage tester
- Tells you a circuit is dead before you touch it. It is the cheapest thing on this list and the one that matters most.Breaker keeps tripping →
Where our costs come from
Every price on this site is published by somebody else and linked in the row it appears in. We do not average them into a figure of our own, because that is the point at which sourced data quietly becomes invented data. Where two sources price the same job differently, both are shown.
- HomeGuide
- National job-cost ranges, updated regularly and broken down by scope.
- Angi
- Job costs drawn from completed work, useful as a second opinion on a range.
- Home Depot
- Current retail pricing for the specific parts and tools a guide names.