The Home Ops Manual
Stop finding out where the water shut-off is during the flood. Every house has a manual — yours didn’t come with one. Nobody hands you the shut-off valve, the furnace filter size, or the year the roof went on. You find out at nine at night with a flashlight in your teeth.
Most maintenance logbooks are no help: they hand you blank forms and assume you already know what belongs in them. This one is a field guide and a record book on the same page — what to check, how to judge whether it is your job or a licensed trade’s, and then the line to write down that it is done.
- An emergency shut-off map you fill in on day one — water, gas, panel, cleanout
- The First 48 Hours audit — the jobs a new owner is assumed to already know
- Twelve “troubleshoot or call the pro?” tables, each with a clear stop line
- Seasonal worksheets repeated for three years — plan and proof on one page
128 pages · 8″ × 10″ · wide rules that take a real pen · not a single printed date.
Know it, judge it, then record it
Six months in, you stop guessing. A year in, you are the person in the house who knows.
The pages you fill in on day one
An emergency shut-off map — water, gas, breaker panel, sewer cleanout, sump disconnect — with the exact location and the tool needed for each, and master contacts facing it. So anyone in the house can find them in the dark.
Twelve tables that end the argument
Symptom, the check you can safely make, the fix you can safely attempt, and the point where you stop and call a licensed trade — breakers, drains, furnaces, heat pumps, appliances, roofs, doors and small engines.
Records worth real money later
Appliance models and serials, a paint and finish directory, contractor licence numbers, a warranty and document locator, a home inventory for insurance — and handover notes written to be left with the house when you sell.
Four of the 128 pages
Everything a house generates
- Day one — emergency shut-off map, master contacts, and the First 48 Hours audit
- Mechanical systems — a circuit directory breaker by breaker with AFCI and GFCI flagged, HVAC and filters with a MERV guide, a water heater flush log with anode rod age, sump and french drain
- Seasonal — spring, summer, fall and winter worksheets, each repeated for three years, with a work log beside every checklist
- Workshop & exterior — the essential 30-piece tool chest, small engine service logs, fuel and storage, driveway and surface care
- Permanent records — appliances, paint and finishes, contractors and licence numbers, annual expenses, warranty locator, home inventory, handover notes
The first year in a house
Written for the new homeowner who has just been handed a set of keys and a building nobody explained. It assumes no trade background, and it never pretends a job is simple when it is not — every diagnostic table has a stop line.
It also works as a closing gift, a rental-property record, or the book you finally start in year eight when you realise nobody ever wrote any of it down.
A big, flat 8 × 10 inch book with room to actually write: wide rules that take a real pen, a detailed table of contents, a running section header on every page, and not a single printed date — so it starts the day you open it.
View on AmazonOther books that keep the record
Same idea, different subject — the page that remembers so you don’t have to.
Medication Log Book
Extra large print, four dose times a day, and a space to initial every one — so nobody has to guess whether a dose was given.
Caregiver Daily Log Book
One page a day the next person can pick up and read — vitals at the top, and a doctor summary every thirty days.
The Complete Dog Care Planner
The same treatment for the other thing in the house that generates records — vet visits, vaccines, and 12 undated calendars.