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Comment by just-juan-post | Hacker News Reader

What is the best way to self educate on these topics?

I know I could buy and comprehend some used college text books. I am also interested in other related topics related to home / building construction and maintenance.

What related topic(s) do you recommend? Any suggestions on how to approach formally learning these things from trusted sources?

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Anything by Joseph Lstiburek[0] will give you a good insight into best practices from an engineering and research perspective. He has a lot of stuff on his website[1] but it's it's not very discoverable. Look under the guidance tab but be prepared to hunt around.

If you're interested in the legal requirements for construction--which, unfortunately, are not necessarily the same as currently understood best practices--buy the relevant building code documentation for your jurisdiction.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Lstiburek https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rem5WhFiiwU

[1] https://www.buildingscience.com/

Thanks.

Along those lines how would one do some formal education on wanting to build (and maintain) their own house? I want to understand what my options are, what my limitations are (non-building code related), what the trade offs are (materials, techniques, site requirements). I want to self educate not only for the initial design and site selection but also so I have enough knowledge to work with contractors and understand the suggestions they are making.

This is all new to me (apartment dweller) but it's coming soon and I'm not sure how to approach it in an efficient and formal way.

I don't think there's a single educational track that addresses everything you want to know.

An architecture degree would give you the background to address most things related to construction, but that's a 2-6 year commitment and is overkill if you just want to build your own house.

I'm not aware of any formal tracks that address household maintenance. Most of this tends to be learned through a combination of reading permanent appliance manuals (e.g. if the manual for your water heater says 'do X every six months,' you do X every six months.) and googling how to fix stuff when it breaks.

There's not a lot of non-obvious maintenance needed on the structure of a house. If stuff looks broken, you just look up how to fix it, or hire someone to fix it for you. There's not really much of an equivalent to car oil changes where something non-obvious has to be done regularly or the building turns to scrap.

For electrics - Rex Cauldwell's "Wiring a House" is written in an accessible manner that shouldn't send you to Google too often. A copy of the NEC helps if you want to really understand everything (or being willing to dig through contractor forums to understand oddball situations) but is overkill for most. The book is mostly about thinking about how to wire a house than prescriptive "this is how it must be done."

I've worked with lots of electricians over the years and the majority of the things in that book reflect the best practices I've seen. Things that don't go out of style like making choices that are respectful of the next person who will work on something. The thing that does go out of style is the NEC it is based on as the latest edition is from 2014 so some specifics may start to be incorrect but by and large it is still applicable.

The Build Show on YouTube is pretty good. Matt Risinger builds a lot of high end homes and puts a lot of attention to details in the construction that the mass manufactured homes don't have.

https://www.youtube.com/c/MattRisinger/videos

There's a lot of good info free at https://www.greenbuildingadvisor.com/ . It's a Taunton site (Fine Woodworking, etc.) and they'd like you to buy a Prime subscription but there's many knowledgeable builders and building science people who really know their stuff. There's much good advice in the Q&A.

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