Field guides to the American house · Three volumes

A $169 test your
inspection did not include.

Radon is named in the home inspection standards as something the inspector is not required to determine. The test costs $169. The mitigation costs $1,826. The avoided medical cost, in the same federal table, is $143,436. The three guides cost $27 during launch — ~~$49~~ after.

They cover what the inspection leaves out: what your house is made of, what fails without ever warning you, and what to do in the first ten minutes. Every number from a public document, cited on the page where it appears.

Volume I — what your house is made of, decade by decade, and how to identify it yourself.
Volume II — the first ten minutes: gas, water, fire, storm, and the order of operations.
Volume III — the failures that give no warning, and what it costs to look for each one.

Get all three — ~~$49~~ $27 Read a page first

“I spent thirty years being paid to look at buildings. The hardest thing to explain to a homeowner was never the repair. It was that the dangerous thing almost never looks dangerous.”
Eleanor

The problem

The home inspection is visual, non-invasive, and not exhaustive. Those are the industry’s own words.

A buyer pays for an inspection, receives a report, and reasonably concludes the house has been checked. The standards that govern that inspection say what it does not have to determine, and the list is more interesting than the report.

“11. the presence of airborne hazards, including radon.”
“13. the existence of environmental hazards, including lead paint, asbestos or toxic drywall.”
“18. correction, replacement or repair cost estimates.”

InterNACHI, Home Inspection Standards of Practice, §2.2. These are the items an inspector is not required to determine. The same document, §2.1: “An inspection is not technically exhaustive” and “will not identify concealed or latent defects.”

None of that is a scandal, and no inspector is doing anything wrong. The scope can be extended by agreement, and these items are commonly sold as priced add-ons. But they are things to ask for, not things to assume you received. One of them happens to be the single best-documented prevention in American housing.

It is outside the standard scope

Radon is named in the list above. The gas has no colour, no smell and no symptom, and no amount of looking at a house detects it.

InterNACHI SoP §2.2, item 11

And it is second only to smoking

The EPA: “the Surgeon General has warned that radon is the second leading cause of lung cancer in the United States today. Only smoking causes more lung cancer deaths.”

EPA, A Citizen’s Guide to Radon, EPA 402/K-12/002

The strategy most people have does not work here

Ask anyone how they keep their house safe and the answer is a version of I pay attention. There is no quantity of attention that finds this one. It is the clearest case for procedure over vigilance, and it is why it opens Volume III.

Volume III, entry 03

Field card · free

The five checks worth doing before anything goes wrong

01The relief pipe on the water heater — which way it points settles it
02Under the deck with a torch: bolt heads, or nail heads
03The basement ceiling, and why it matters more than the joists
04Three-eighths of an inch, measured on your own stairs
05The one test a home inspection is not required to include

Each with what it costs to look · 4 pages · PDF

Free, before you decide anything

The five checks I would do this weekend.

Not a sample chapter. Five things drawn from across the three volumes that cost nothing but a torch and a tape measure — each with what to look for and which professional the question belongs to.

If the card is useful on its own and you never buy the guides, that is a fine outcome. It is how you find out whether the rest is written for your house.

One email with the PDF. Unsubscribe in one click, and I do not sell the list.

The math

What it costs to ask, against what it costs not to.

Four pairs. Every figure is federal, and every one carries the year of its dollars — because a 2013 dollar is not a 2026 dollar, and a source that hides that is hiding something.

Not asking

Radon, found late — avoided medical cost per patient$143,436Federal table, Oct 2025, in 2023 dollars, method published
Carbon monoxide hospitalisation$9,554CDC-authored study, in 2013 dollars — range to $11,678
Full lead abatement, after the fact$9,570HUD/NCHH, May 2004, in mid-1990s dollars — the source says so
Lead penalty, per violation, per day$49,77240 CFR §19.4, in force since 8 January 2025

Asking

A radon test$169Mitigation, if needed: $1,826 — same federal table, same dollar year
A carbon monoxide alarm$25–60The CDC calculated the return: 5.6:1 to 7.2:1
Lead: cleaning and spot painting instead$430Five per cent of full abatement
Following a relief pipe with your eye$0Volume III, entry 06 — and it takes two seconds

All three guides, once~~$49~~ $27

The EPA publishes the radon return itself: $7.38 to $15.27 back per dollar invested. That is the agency's figure, not mine.

These are published figures with their dollar years attached, not guarantees. What each one costs in your house depends on your house — and the books never give repair prices, only what it costs to look.

What you actually get

Three volumes. Eighty-nine entries. Everything numbered and sourced.

Volume I — What your house is made of

Organised by decade, because in American construction the date of the work predicts the material better than anything you could observe. Every entry carries the document that dates it, and where no date could be sourced, it says so.

The surprise is how often the agencies tell you to leave it alone. Asbestos, vermiculite and lead paint — the three people most want removed on sight — are all cases where removal can be the more dangerous act. The trigger is the renovation, not the presence.

The rule it teaches: the trigger is the renovation, not the presence, and three separate agencies chose to presume rather than measure.

27 entries · identification you can do yourself · PDF

Volume II — The ten minutes that decide it

What you do in the first minutes, before anyone arrives — and the order matters more than any single action. Gas, alarms, downed lines, water, fire in the kitchen, flood depth, storms, a line down on your car.

Several entries exist to stop the instinctive move: water on a grease fire, swerving, getting out of the car. One rule opens the book and covers the most dangerous case: nothing that opens or closes a circuit.

39 entries · the first minutes · PDF

Volume III — The failures that give no warning

The things that run on a delay longer than the career of whoever built them, and give no warning at all. Deck connections, radon, water behind cladding, relief valves, flues, gas bonding, guards, windows, stairs.

In three separate entries the mechanism is a repair somebody made on purpose, believing they were helping. For this class of hazard, paying attention is not the tool. Procedure is.

23 entries · the quiet failures · PDF

The offer

One book, or all three.

Instant PDF download. Read on anything. No subscription, no account, nothing that renews.

Volume I

$14.99

What your house is made of
27 entries, dated to the decade — you read the ones that match your house
Identification tests that cost nothing: a coin, a magnet, a torch held at a low angle
Where the agencies say leave it alone — and why removal can be the worse act

The trigger is the renovation, not the presence. Which means this volume earns its price while you are still planning work, not after a contractor is already on site.

Buy Volume I

All three — best value

$27.00

$49.00

Volume I — What your house is made of
Volume II — The ten minutes that decide it
Volume III — The failures that give no warning Collection only
89 entries · 155 pages · 126 public documents cited
Every source named, every gap marked — including two famous numbers this book takes away from you

List price, all three volumes$49.00

Volume I or Volume II, on its own$14.99

Volume III — the silent failurescollection only

Launch price, today$27.00

You save$22.00 — 45% off

Get all three — ~~$49~~ $27

Volume II

$14.99

The ten minutes that decide it
39 entries, in the order you need them — gas, water, fire, storm, flood
The entries that stop the instinctive move: water on a grease fire, swerving, getting out of the car
Who to call, and what to say when they answer

One rule opens the book and covers the worst case: nothing that opens or closes a circuit. It takes four seconds to learn and it is the entry I would want read first.

Buy Volume II

Volume III is not sold separately. The collection is a different product, not a discount.

Who wrote this

Eleanor

Thirty years of being paid to look at buildings, and a strong preference for documents over opinions. These guides exist because the information is already public, already paid for by taxpayers, and written in a register nobody outside the trade reads.

What I am not doing here is inspecting your house. I have never seen it. Every entry tells you what a document requires, how to compare your own situation against it, and who to send the question to. There is no verdict in these books, from me, about anything you own, and the word “safe” never appears as a conclusion.

Sixty days.

If the books are not what this page said they were, write to me within sixty days and I will refund you. You keep the files. Sending a PDF back is theatre and I am not going to ask for it.

Questions people actually ask.

Is this a home inspection?

No, and it never pretends to be. An inspection is a person in your house. This is a guide to what the public documents require, what you can check yourself, and which professional each question belongs to. The books never tell you a house is safe.

Will it tell me what repairs cost?

No, deliberately. Repair prices vary by region and by year and are exactly how a book like this ages badly. What every entry gives you instead is what it costs to look, which for most of them is a torch, a tape measure, or nothing at all.

Do I need to be handy?

No. Almost every check in these books is looking at something and comparing it to a written requirement. Where a job is genuinely not a householder’s, the entry says so plainly. In one case the code itself was written to stop homeowners attempting the repair.

My house is new. Is any of this relevant?

Volume I is organised by decade, so parts of it will not apply. Volumes II and III largely do: relief valves, dryer ducts, guards, stairs, radon and window falls are not age-dependent, and several of the requirements in Volume III are recent rather than historic.

Are these American codes and agencies?

Yes. Every source is a US federal agency, a US code body, a US court or a US filing. The mechanisms are general; the numbers, requirements and telephone numbers are American.

What format?

PDF, downloadable immediately, readable on a phone, a tablet, a computer or printed. No app, no account, nothing that expires.

Why is Volume III not sold on its own?

Because it assumes the other two. It refers back to identification from Volume I and to the emergency order of operations in Volume II. Sold alone it would be a worse book, and I would rather not sell it than sell it in a form where it underperforms.

Nothing here yet.

This is where reader comments will go, once there are readers. I am not going to write them myself in the meantime.

Honest answers

Questions people actually ask.

Is this a home inspection?

Is this AI?

You do not have to take my word for anything in here. Every entry has a public document printed beside it, and every one of those documents is free to read. Two entries exist mainly to tell you that a famous number is misattributed, and one corrects a research lead I published myself and got wrong. Check the ones you care about — that is what they are there for.

Will it tell me what repairs cost?

No, deliberately. Repair prices vary by region and by year and are exactly how a book like this ages badly. What every entry gives you instead is what it costs to look — which for most of them is a torch, a tape measure, or nothing at all.

Do I need to be handy?

No. Almost every check is looking at something and comparing it to a written requirement. Where a job is genuinely not a householder’s, the entry says so plainly — and in one case the code itself was written to stop homeowners attempting the repair.

My house is new. Is any of this relevant?

Volume I is organised by decade, so parts of it will not apply. Volumes II and III largely do — relief valves, dryer ducts, guards, stairs, radon and window falls are not age-dependent, and several requirements in Volume III are recent rather than historic.

Are these American codes and agencies?

Yes. Every source is a US federal agency, a US code body, a US court or a US filing. The mechanisms are general; the numbers, requirements and telephone numbers are American.

A $169 test your
inspection did not include.