This book is a useful reference in some areas for its target readership, which is ’small builders and do-it-yourselfers’, though it seems to me to go too far at times and not far enough at others. The span tables for joists and trusses for live loads and dead loads and several different species of wood strike me as overkill, when any carpenter or lumber salesman or building inspector worthy of the name can tell you a safe span. The same goes for plywood and other related sheathing. There’s no need to complicate matters with all the arcane ratings and designations put out by the lumber associations. In a nutshell, plywood is either CDX (rough and resistant to weather) or sanded (smooth and expensive) and comes in 1/4, 3/8, 1/2, 5/8, and 3/4 inch thicknesses.

The section on framing is quite good, with clear illustrations and interesting discussion. The section on plumbing is excellent, covering all aspects in just enough detail; the same goes for the wiring, an area where all too many people fear to venture, though most electrical problems are simple and safe to solve with minimal precautions.

I do dispute Wing’s chapter on insulation. He argues for sealing up a house tight as a drum in order to keep every possible BTU inside and hence save on energy bills. I don’t think a highly sealed house is a healthy environment, never mind about the many extra hours it would add to a project to seal all the places he suggests. And I was a little puzzled to read that the ‘best-performing caulks are, unfortunately, not commonly available’. The choice of caulks, in my experience, is huge, and I’ve found most of them to perform very well. In fact, I am amazed sometime at the variety and capability of the caulks on the market. I only wish such abundance and competitive pricing existed in other markets such as that of home videos and all-cotton boxer shorts. Puzzling, too, is his inclusion of ’sawdust’ in a table of insulation materials. I have seen spaces between studs filled up with sawdust to insulate, but that was on an old cabin in the hills built in the twenties. Does anyone really still use sawdust for insulation?

Finally, I don’t think any guide to building materials is complete without a discussion of where to buy things, for this is part and parcel of the do-it-yourselfer experience. A person working with a restricted budget (and who among us is not) will pay between 25% and 400% more for most items at an independent lumberyard or hardware store than at one of the big box retailers such as Home Depot or Builders Square. Thus, it behooves that person to familiarize himself or herself with the standard items in such stores and to design building projects accordingly. Similarly, The Visual Handbook could be improved by further standardization along these lines: excise all mention of sawdust insulation, quadruple-glazed windows, and Polynesian duo pitch trusses. These improvements could well render the Visual Handbook indispensable and suitable for use not only in construction zones but in high schools and colleges as well.

June 2000

I have been using Mr. Wing’s book for about 9 months for remodeling my house. It is an absolutely indispensable source of information about remodeling or rebuilding. You will easily get your money back from the saved time that this book will provide. It also will provide you with guidelines to check against what the contractor(s) you hire tell you they are going to do. Unfortunately, many contractors are not worth spit and many are dishonest. This book will help you to avoid them.

It is not a perfect book. The section on plumbing, while quite good, is minimal for the remodeler. E.g., Do-It-Yourselfers need more information on how to replace 50 year old(i.e., Cast Iron or Concrete) DWV plumbing and the MAJOR pitfalls of Galvanized piping and items like Drum Traps. It also does not have explanations or formulas for calculating flow rates and pressure for water supply lines. It should. One cannot install an irrigation system or even the house water supply without knowing that info in advance.

The electrical section is missing the worksheets for calculating the house loads, proper techniques for rewiring an old house, i.e., where should all those runs go and how to properly install the wire so that nobody can ‘accidentally’ pull them loose, and could use more diagrams of wiring techinques for lights and switches. The short section on circuit theory is a joke, I think. Mr. Wing must have felt obligated to put Ohms law in the book. If you don’t understand circuit theory and the basics of electrical wiring, do NOT use this book to do your wiring – hire a contractor or go to school for a year or two and learn about them.

Mr. Wing tends toward ‘hiring a contractor’ to get those jobs done. As an engineer, I appreciate the wisdom of the advice, but that does not help the person that is going to do it but has never done it before. In short, you are going to need other references that provide more detail. In other words, the title of the “Only” Guide… is false. It should be the “Best” or “Greatest”.

The book is really more of a reference guide and not a “how to” book. It may be all the experienced do-it-yourselfer ever needs, but not the novice. I’m a novice at many of the remodeling tasks but have many years of training and education as an engineer, so this book really helps me a lot. I’m pretty sure that anyone in the remodeling business would find this book to be complete, even though their professional opinions might differ from Mr. Wing’s advice in certain sections.

I have to agree that the span tables are overkill for just about anyone because LOCAL codes overrule any data that is in the 50 pages! of Span tables and Truss information. Mr. Wing must have had a good source for Span information.

I should also mention that this book sat on my shelf for many months, unused, while I gathered basic information on remodeling. Once that info was absorbed and I needed more, I opened the book. It has not been closed since then – I can’t close it because it has too many notes in it.

It is a great book. Not the “only” book you’ll need, but if you don’t get it you are going to kick yourself later.