Visual Handbook of Building and Remodeling

I have dozens of books on home building and this one is the best. It covers the topics in a very straight forward manner with great illustrations. His sections on the thermal envelope, heating , cooling , lighting, and sound are great. These are areas that the average builder does not cover well at all. Anyone building a house should read this book. A home is the largest investment a person makes and reading this book gives you the basic knowledge to see that it is going well. I am an engineer and I used this book while I was the general contractor on my own house.

Great reference book. A lot of building info all in one book. Easy to read, great photos and drawings making doing a job much easier.

This book is great for understanding how to build, at a glance. Sometimes a picture is worth a thousand words, this is it.

June 2000I 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 ha

From the do-it-yourselfer to the professional finish carpenter, all the way into the spectrum of those just starting out with home projects, this book is indespensible! The no nonsense, clear intentions of Charlie Wing in creating a manual for the purpose of aiding in the crucial field of home improvement and construction is a blessing from cover to cover. I work as a construction estimator in Colorado and we have tons of books, pamphlets and manuals, but, Charlies book is the only one you'll find in our offices, shop and vehicles in constant use, always open, coffee stained and constantly quoted. Hats off to attention to detail, from design to walk-thru this is it!