About the Editor

Home Reference Guide is written and maintained as a plain-language encyclopedia of residential systems: how they work, how they fail, and how their problems are diagnosed and repaired. Articles are reviewed by Harold R. Bennett, a retired home inspector who spent roughly four decades looking at houses, their water heaters, roofs, wiring, foundations, and everything in between, and writing plainly about what he found.

The site's editorial rules are simple: describe the mechanism before the fix, name the evidence before the verdict, be honest about what a homeowner can do and what belongs to a licensed professional, and never dress up a maintenance page as a sales page. Where a product category is relevant to an answer, it is discussed factually; this site does not run affiliate links or sponsored placements inside reference articles.

Nothing here substitutes for an on-site evaluation. When an article says "call a professional," it means it.