Articles
Plain-language guides to planning home projects.
- Aluminum wiring: how to tell, and what actually fixes itIf your house went up between the mid-1960s and the mid-1970s, there is a real chance the branch circuits are aluminum rather than copper. That is not a reason …
- Dripping kitchen faucet: repair, replace, and why stuck shutoff valves change the quoteA dripping kitchen faucet is usually fixture work, so the local starting range is {{headlineRange}}. The quote can climb when the small shutoff valves under the…
- Gas water heater leaking from the bottom: what to shut off first, and what a same-week 50-gallon replacement runs hereIf water is pooling under a gas water heater, shut the gas control to "off," then close the cold water valve on the pipe entering the top of the tank, then get …
- How hard is the water here, really?Hardness is one of the few things about your water that your utility publishes and that you can act on. Two systems in this area publish theirs, and the numbers…
- Your kitchen sink has backed up for a week straight. Here's what's really going on.A sink that drains after you plunge it and backs up again two days later almost never has a clog in the trap — it has a pipe whose walls have narrowed, usually …
- Levittown was built on slabs, and it still showsBetween February 1952 and 1958, 17,311 houses went up across 10.4 square miles of lower Bucks County. They were built on a 26-step assembly line, in six models,…
- Sales tax on home improvement work in PennsylvaniaHomeowners often look at a remodeling quote, fail to find a sales tax line, and wonder whether something has been left off. Usually nothing has. Pennsylvania ha…
- Replacing your panel? Surge protection is now part of the jobPennsylvania adopted a new set of building codes on 1 January 2026, and one change inside them affects nearly every homeowner who upgrades or replaces an electr…
- Toilet Clogged and the Plunger Is Not WorkingIf one toilet is clogged and nothing else is backing up, the next step is usually a toilet auger or a fixture-level drain call, not sewer excavation. Around Buc…
- Do you need a permit to replace a water heater here?Almost always yes — and the office that issues it is your township or borough, not Bucks or Montgomery County. That surprises people, and it is the single most …
- Well and septic: the one permit that is not municipalAlmost every permit you will ever pull on a house in Pennsylvania is issued by your township or borough. Wells and on-lot sewage are the exception, and they go …
- Which electric utility actually serves your townMost of Bucks and Montgomery County is PECO, and most of the time that assumption is harmless. It stops being harmless when you are arranging a service upgrade,…