The bench, inside the barn door The Workbench Manual · First Edition
The Workbench Manual Get the Manual · $47
Levi Yoder · First Edition
From the Levi Yoder channel

Half of what a house costs you is a problem nobody ever identified.

I am Levi Yoder. I keep a bench just inside the barn door, and this is everything that has passed over it: eighty-two chapters on heat, water, power, food, the garden, pests, the fabric of a building and the ground it stands on. Every one of them has a section on what I got wrong, because the mistakes turned out to be worth more than the methods.

Get the Manual See what’s inside
“Find out what is actually happening. Then do the free thing first.”

Nothing in it needs a contractor, a subscription, or debt.

$47 · read on any device · 30-day money-back guarantee

The Workbench Manual
— Eighty-Two Things I Have Actually Done on My Own Place, Including the Ones That Did Not Work
Levi Yoder
Levi Yoder
Instant PDF Any device · print at home
1087 pages · 82 chapters · 11 sections
01 · The math

Your house runs on numbers nobody ever checks.

These are them. Not my numbers, the government’s: what an ordinary American household actually spends in a year, from the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the Energy Information Administration.

The green ink in the margin is which chapters go after that line. I am not going to tell you what you will save, because I do not know your house, and a book that promises you a figure has told you something it cannot know. I will tell you where the money goes.

$47. Once. The bills come back every year.

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The chapters
that go after it ↓
An ordinary house
— what one year actually costs —
Heating and coolingEIA / BLS household averages$2,000–$2,500Sealing, insulating, and heating the room instead of the houseSections 1 & 2 · 18 chapters
Water and sewerBLS, household utilities$600–$800The leak that makes no noise, and catching rainSection 3 · 6 chapters
Water heatingEIA, residential end use$400–$550Scale, and the annual flush nobody doesChapter 22
Upkeep and small repairsBLS, household maintenance$1,000–$2,000The walk in the rain, and the gutters above itSection 10 · 8 chapters
Cleaning and household suppliesBLS, housekeeping supplies$250–$400Five jobs, six substancesSections 8 & 9 · 12 chapters

Eleven sections, aimed at every line on that page.

Sources: US Bureau of Labor Statistics, Consumer Expenditure Survey · US Energy Information Administration, Residential Energy Consumption Survey.
What you keep depends on your house, your climate, your prices and how much of it you actually do. The book prints no savings figure of its own and says why.

02 · What’s inside

Eleven sections, 82 chapters, 1087 pages.

Every chapter is built the same way. What the problem actually is. What almost everybody does instead, and why it does not work. What I do, and what it cost. Where the safety line is. What I got wrong. And what the method will not fix, stated plainly, because a book that only ever says “this works” is not one you can trust the second time.

01

Heat & Weatherproofing

8 chapters
  1. Sealing the Drafts
  2. The Attic Blanket
  3. Windows Without Replacing Them
  4. Night Insulation
  5. Heat Mass, and Where to Put It
  6. Where a Stove Goes, and Why
  7. Floors, Crawlspaces and the Band Joist
  8. Heating the Room, Not the House
02

Cooling

10 chapters
  1. The Night Flush
  2. The Attic Is the Oven
  3. Shading the Glass, from the Outside
  4. Evaporative Cooling, and Where It Actually Works
  5. Moving Air Over Skin
  6. The One Cool Room
  7. The Heat You Make Indoors
  8. The Roof, and What Colour It Is
  9. Making an Air Conditioner Work Half as Hard
  10. The Cool That Is Already There
03

Water

6 chapters
  1. Where Your Water Comes From
  2. Frozen Pipes, and the Morning After
  3. Catching Rain
  4. Hard Water and What It Eats
  5. The Leaks You Cannot Hear
  6. Water When the Power Is Out
04

Off-Grid Power

6 chapters
  1. What You Actually Use
  2. Small Solar That Works
  3. Batteries
  4. Inverters
  5. The Copper, the Fuse, and What Starts Fires
  6. What You Actually Have to Keep Running
05

Food Preservation

8 chapters
  1. The Root Cellar
  2. Cold Without a Refrigerator
  3. Drying
  4. Salt, Sugar and Smoke
  5. Water Bath Canning
  6. Pressure Canning
  7. Fermentation
  8. Flour, Rice, Beans and What Gets Into Them
06

Garden

8 chapters
  1. Soil Is the Whole Thing
  2. Compost
  3. Watering
  4. Mulch
  5. Starting From Seed
  6. Spacing and Succession
  7. Borrowing Weeks at Both Ends
  8. Saving Seed
07

Pest Control

12 chapters
  1. Identify Before You Act
  2. The Hole Is the Pest
  3. Rats and Mice
  4. Mosquitoes
  5. Ants
  6. Cockroaches
  7. Wasps and Hornets
  8. Ticks, and the Shape of a Yard
  9. Snakes
  10. Slugs, Snails and the Ones That Work at Night
  11. What Gets Into Stored Things
  12. Diatomaceous Earth, Borax, and What People Reach For
08

Household Substances

8 chapters
  1. The Cupboard Under the Sink
  2. Vinegar
  3. Bicarbonate, Washing Soda and the Caustic End
  4. Bleach
  5. Soap and Detergent
  6. Solvents
  7. Oils, Waxes and Finishes
  8. Labels, Storage and Getting Rid of It
09

Cleaning

4 chapters
  1. The Order of Operations
  2. The Kitchen
  3. Bathrooms, Damp and Mould
  4. Floors
10

Structure & Repair

8 chapters
  1. Water Is What Destroys Buildings
  2. Gutters, Downpipes and Where the Water Goes
  3. The Three Kinds of Damp
  4. Ventilation, and the Problem We Made
  5. Rust
  6. Rot
  7. Fixings
  8. Fix It, Watch It, or Telephone Somebody
11

Land

4 chapters
  1. Where the Water Goes
  2. Boundaries, Trees and Neighbours
  3. Looking at Land Before You Buy It
  4. The Things You Touch Every Day
03 · The honest part

The deal this book makes with you.

✕The old trick everybody repeatsWhere it has been properly tested and failed, I say so, including the ones I used for years.
✕The diagnosis from the man selling the cureI tell you to pay somebody independent instead, and why that is the cheapest money in the book.
✕The number invented to sell a bookThere are about ten places I refuse to print a figure. I say so at the point, and name the tested source instead.
✕The job you should not do yourselfI tell you to stop and telephone somebody, and which trade to ring.
Levi Yoder — Levi
Levi Yoder at the bench
Levi Yoder · at the bench
04 · Who is telling you this
“Find out what is actually happening. Then do the free thing first.”

I did not write this because the old ways are charming. I wrote it because most of what goes wrong with a house is a problem nobody has identified, being treated by somebody who was sold a solution for a different one.

Almost every chapter in here ends up in the same place. The identification is free. The thing with the best evidence behind it is usually a walk, a habit, a spade or an afternoon. And the thing with the advertising budget is third on the list.

The people I made this for are not beginners. You have a house, or a place, and you have been quietly working round something for years. This is the book I wish somebody had handed me before I painted over the stain.

Read it once through. Then go to work.

05 · Order the manual

Read it for a month. If it is not for you, I do not want your money.

Read it for thirty days. If it is not what you hoped, write to me and I will refund every cent, no questions. Pay once and it is yours to keep, on your phone, your tablet, or printed at the kitchen table. No subscription. Nothing else to buy.

It is a working manual, not a doorstop. 82 short chapters, each one a problem you can start on in the morning.

$47
82Chapters
1087Pages
30Day refund
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06 · Questions

Questions people ask

Do I need to own my house for this to be worth it?

Some of it needs permission and some of it is your landlord’s property, and the book says so plainly in the closing rather than pretending otherwise. What still works if you rent: sealing drafts, the food storage, the pest exclusion in the parts you occupy, all of the substances and cleaning sections, and the whole garden section if you have any ground. For the rest, the book tells you how to put it to a landlord in writing.

Do I need to be handy?

Mostly a torch, a spade, a bradawl and an afternoon. A surprising share of the book is walking round your own property at the right moment and knowing what you are looking at. Where a job needs an electrician, a gas engineer, a structural engineer or a chimney sweep, the chapter says so and says why.

Will this work where I live?

The mechanisms are physics and they do not care where you are. Where something is genuinely regional, such as evaporative cooling, night-flush ventilation or what is legal about rainwater and boundaries, the book says so and tells you to check your own conditions rather than assuming mine.

Food preservation and pest control. Is that safe to follow at home?

Those are the strictest sections in the book, and they are strict in an unusual way: they refuse to print processing times, pressures, cure percentages and doses. Every actual process routes to a currently tested source such as the National Center for Home Food Preservation or a state extension service, and the book explains at each point why it will not give you a number of its own.

Is there medical or legal advice in it?

None, deliberately. Several subjects touch on both. Every one of them routes to a doctor, to published public health guidance, or to a solicitor. The boundaries chapter states outright that it is not legal advice and that property law varies by jurisdiction.

What do I get, and is it a subscription?

One book: a 1087-page PDF, emailed the moment you buy. It reads on a phone, a tablet or a computer, and it is laid out to print at home. You pay once. Nothing renews.

Most of it was free. Somebody just had to tell you which part.

Eighty-two chapters on the house, the water, the power, the food, the ground and the small ordinary things you put your hand on every day. 1087 pages. One honest book. $47, once.

Get the Manual · $47

30-day refund · emailed instantly · PDF