101 Hacks & Fixes

The Arithmetic

Most of what breaks is a ten-minute job.

You don't pay $150 for the repair. You pay it for knowing which two minutes of the ten actually matter. Here's a sample of what's in the manual.

The Job

What a Shop Charges

What It Actually Takes

Slow bathroom drain

$150 – $300

Dish soap + a bucket · 10 min

Water heater losing its life early

$1,200 – $2,000 (replacement)

One anode rod · 40 min · every 4 yrs

Running toilet, $30 on the water bill

$125 – $200

$9 flapper · 15 min

Dryer taking two cycles to dry

$180 – $250

Clear the vent run · 30 min · twice a yr

Car pulling, tires gone at 25,000 miles

$800+ (new set, early)

Pressure + rotation on a calendar · 20 min

Headlights so hazed you fail inspection

$120 – $400

Two grits and a polish · 45 min

Prices are typical U.S. service and product prices. Yours will differ by state, by shop, and by season — the manual tells you the range and how to tell if you're being quoted honestly.

$4,500

is roughly what a normal household hands over in a normal year for jobs that are in this book. Not emergencies. Not disasters. The ordinary, quiet, recurring ones.

Contents

101 fixes. Four parts. Sixteen sections.

Numbered like a supply catalogue, because that's how you find things fast. There's also an index by symptom in the back — look up the smell, the noise, or the leak, and it sends you to the fix.

Part I

House Systems

Fixes 1 – 50

Drains, Pipes & Toilets10 fixes
Water Heater & Pressure6 fixes
Heating & Cooling8 fixes
Laundry6 fixes
Kitchen7 fixes
Small Repairs8 fixes
Outside5 fixes

Part II

The Motor Pool

Fixes 51 – 78

Keep It Alive7 fixes
Fix It Yourself12 fixes
Clean & Protect6 fixes
Dealing With the Shop3 fixes

Part III

The Supply Room

Fixes 79 – 93

The Big Four10 fixes
The Field Kit5 fixes

What to keep on the shelf, what it costs, and what you can stop buying entirely.

Part IV

The PMCS Calendar

Fixes 94 – 101

Monthly Walkarounds—
Seasonal Saturdays—
The Savings Ledger—
The First-Saturday Mission—

PMCS is what the Army calls checking a thing before it fails instead of after. It works on a house.

How It's Written

Every fix is briefed the same way.

Same four parts, every time. Once you've read one, you can read all 101 without thinking about it.

01

What's happening

The cause, in two or three sentences. Not theory — what's physically going on in there.

02

What you need

Exact materials, exact amounts, what they cost. No "some" or "a bit of."

03

What to do

Numbered steps with the minutes on each one. Illustrated where a photo says it faster than a paragraph.

04

The cost strip

What a shop charges against what you just spent. So you can see the arithmetic on every single page.

⚠ Read This Part Twice

The manual also tells you what is not your job.

Any book that says you can do everything yourself is selling you something. Four categories are not yours, they're never going to be yours, and the manual says so on the page instead of quietly leaving you to find out. For each one it tells you who to call and roughly what the call should cost, so you're not guessing there either.

✕ Gas — lines, valves, appliances
✕ High voltage — the panel, the service entrance
✕ Brake hydraulics
✕ Garage door springs

Included With the Manual

Three printables and every future edition.

Made to be printed on plain paper and stuck somewhere useful — inside a cabinet door, in the glovebox, on the workbench.

Included

Bonus 01 · Printable PDF

The First-Saturday Mission

Three fixes, one morning. Do them the first Saturday you own the book and it has paid for itself before the next bill arrives. Start here if you start nowhere else.

Included

Bonus 02 · Printable PDF

The PMCS Checklist Pack

Monthly and seasonal checklists for the house and the car. Print them, tick them, file them. This is the difference between fixing things and not needing to.

Included

Bonus 03 · Printable PDF

The Supply Sheet

Where to buy every material in the book at the honest price. Real stores, real part numbers. No affiliate links — I don't take a cut and I'm not going to pretend otherwise.

Forever

Also Included

Lifetime Updates

Every future edition, free, to the same email address. Prices move, parts change, and I keep adding fixes. You bought the manual, not one printing of it.

Straight Answer

Whether this is for you.

Buy it if —

✓ You own a home and at least one vehicle you'd like to keep running.
✓ You've paid a man $150 for ten minutes of work and it bothered you afterwards.
✓ You have never done any of this and want to be told exactly what to do.
✓ You want a reference for the drawer, not a book you read once and forget.
✓ You'd rather have real numbers than encouragement.

Don't buy it if —

✕ You're a working tradesman. You already know all of this and more.
✕ You want engine rebuilds, framing, or anything structural. That's not this book.
✕ You want a video course. This is a manual. It's meant to be read and kept.

A Word From Dale

Dale R. Whitfield

Sgt. Dale Whitfield — From the Sergeant Dale Whitfield channel

This manual came out of supply work — the unglamorous kind, where somebody has to keep equipment running and buildings heated on a budget that gets smaller every year, and "we'll just replace it" is almost never an answer you're allowed to give.

You learn two habits doing that. The first is that most failures announce themselves months ahead — in a noise, a smell, or a number on a gauge — and almost nobody is listening. The second is that the old field manuals had it right: write down exactly what to do, in order, with the amounts and the minutes, and a man who's never done it can do it correctly the first time.

A house is a motor pool. Same failures, same warning signs, same nobody listening. So the fixes got written down the way a field manual would have written them, and 101 of them turned into this book.

I'm not going to tell you it's exciting. I'm going to tell you it works — and that when a job isn't yours to do, it says so.

— Dale Dale R. Whitfield · 30 years, Army supply

The Channel

From the Sergeant Dale Whitfield YouTube channel — same voice, same approach, more of it.

First Edition · 2026

130+ pages, 101 numbered fixes, illustrated throughout, indexed by symptom.

7-Day Guarantee

Read it, try a fix. If it isn't what you wanted, email me inside seven days and I'll refund it. No questions.

Lifetime Updates

Every new edition free, forever, to the address you bought it with.

First Edition · Launch Price

What you get

✓ The full 130+ page illustrated manual — 101 numbered fixes
✓ Index by symptom — find the fix by the smell, noise or leak
✓ Bonus: The First-Saturday Mission (printable)
✓ Bonus: The PMCS Checklist Pack (printable)
✓ Bonus: The Supply Sheet (printable, no affiliate links)
✓ Lifetime updates — every future edition free

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Seven days, no questions asked.

Buy it, read it, try a fix on a Saturday. If it isn't what you were after, email me inside seven days and you get your $27 back. I'd rather have the refund than a man who feels he was talked into something.

Before You Buy

Questions I get asked.

Immediately. Payment clears and the download lands in your email inside a minute, through Gumroad's checkout. Nothing ships, nothing waits.

Standard PDF. Read it on a phone, tablet or computer, or print it on plain paper and put it in a binder — it was laid out to be printed. The three bonus checklists are made for printing specifically.

No. It assumes you've done none of it. Every fix says what you need, what it costs, and what to do in numbered steps with the minutes on each one. A $50 toolbox covers almost all 101.

A basic toolbox — around $50 if you're starting from nothing — handles nearly everything. The few fixes that need something beyond that say so at the top of the page, along with what it costs and whether renting it makes more sense than buying.

The jobs in the book are chosen to be safe for someone with no experience, done in the order given. Four categories are deliberately left out and marked — gas, high voltage, brake hydraulics and garage door springs. For those the book tells you to call somebody and roughly what it should cost. Follow product labels and local codes, and work within what you're comfortable with.

It's an estimate — typical U.S. service and product prices for the jobs covered in the book, over a normal year in a normal household. Your number depends on your house, your car, your state and your shop. The book gives you the ranges so you can work out your own.

No. One payment of $27, and it's yours. That includes every future edition free — I'm not going to charge you twice for the same book.

Seven days, no questions asked. Email inside a week and you get your money back.

Start the First Saturday

Three fixes. One morning.

Do the First-Saturday Mission the week you get it and the manual has paid for itself before your next bill arrives. Everything after that is money you keep.

$27 $47

First Edition Launch Price

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