Terms

Using this site

Read it, use the guides, send them to whoever needs them. You may quote or link to anything here. What you may not do is republish whole guides as your own, or scrape the site to reassemble it somewhere else — the cost tables took real sourcing and that is the part with value in it.

Repair guidance, and its limits

These guides are written for a general audience and cannot see your house. A fault that presents identically in two homes can have different causes, and codes and requirements vary by state and municipality. Everything here is information, not a professional inspection of your specific system.

Where a job is genuinely beyond DIY we say so and give the reason rather than just telling you to consult a professional. Please take those lines seriously: sealed refrigerant systems, gas lines, the breaker panel itself and anything at roof height are named as stopping points because the failure modes are electrocution, fire, asphyxiation and falls, not because of caution for its own sake. Refrigerant in particular is not a judgement call — US EPA Section 608 certification is legally required to buy and handle it.

You are responsible for deciding whether a job is within your competence, and for the result if you go ahead. If you are unsure, that uncertainty is the answer: call someone.

If something on this site is wrong, we want to know more than you want to tell us. Send us the correction.

Costs and prices

Every figure carries a named, linked source and the date we took it. Prices move, vary enormously by region, and a quote you are given in your own kitchen beats any national average including the ones we cite. Treat our numbers as a sanity check on a quote, not as a quote.

Links to other sites

We link out to price sources, manufacturers and standards bodies. We do not control those sites and are not responsible for them. See the affiliate disclosure for whether we earn anything from an outbound link — at the time of writing, we do not.

The email

The monthly is free, arrives about twelve times a year, and every issue has an unsubscribe link that works immediately. We do not sell the list. See privacy.

No warranty

This site is provided as is. We work hard to be accurate and we correct mistakes when they are pointed out, but we cannot guarantee that every page is complete, current or right for your situation, and we are not liable for loss or damage arising from decisions you make after reading it. Nothing here limits liability for anything that cannot lawfully be limited.

Changes

If these terms change, the date at the top changes. Continuing to use the site means the current version applies.