Aestu wrote:
Or is it really, truly that easy?
House hold wiring is pretty damn simple : [ you need to know what wire to put where(loads required/ traffic expected, the hard part) you need to put the wires where people aren't going to put nails in them(STAY AWAY FROM DOORS AND WINDOWS) on horizontal planes drill holes in studs so nails/skrews into said studs wont hit the wire and/or use nail plates, on verticals staple wires to studs. As far as how wires are hooked up to make a light work you just follow a wiring diagram for what you are trying to do(much easier nowadays with google but there are books). Not exactly sure how to wire a circuit panel but I'm pretty sure the panel comes with instructions.
Plumbing is a little more complicated. But it to is pretty easy these days with Pex tubing for water lines as you can get hardware stuff which works fine that you use a tool to just clamp shit together. You have to account for flow(how much water you need on a "run") but in residential situations you pretty much run half inch to everything(you can steal off a sink for a toilet fine). The more complicated part is the drainage and there are in fact a LOT OF RULES because your drainage system is connected to your venting and different stuff needs different stuff.
Heating...Depends what kind of heat you are running, I only really have experience with hot water(not a lot of forced air systems in the north east since air conditioning is not needed) which you either do baseboard or radiant heat. It's good to know how much heat you need(what your heatloss is in the winter) and there are mathematical equations for cubic feet of air in a room / outside walls / number of windows and doors on the outside walls. You can only put so much baseboard in a room and Xfeet of baseboard gives X BTU's so its not as bad as radiant is. With radiant you have a lot of factors, you are running loops of tubing between the stringers in a floor. So you only have so much floor space to work with. Depending on the heatloss you can do 5/8 inch or 3/4 inch tubing to get more heat. You can do shorter loops(that retain heat longer) or higher temp water through the loops to gain more BTU's, they also make these aluminum plates you can nail up and clip the tubes into which gives you better heat transfer. Depending on the size of the house or the number of zones you might need to have manifolds that a zone goes to that is fed by larger(inch to 1 1/14 tube) tubing. Once your in the boiler room you have options as to how you want it and how your boiler is setup. Most boilers come with schematics that will give you options to copy out but they don't match up exactly so you have to adjust them to fit what you are doing.
And cars are like playing with Legos(Chilton's Repair Manuals ftw) !! But for some stuff you do need specialized tools /shrug.
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I think they are like any other hands on skill, I decided when I was like 16 that I wanted to build my own computer and since I'm not made of money I knew that I needed to do it right the first time. So I did a lot of research into terminology and what different things do and how they work together and made decisions(AMD vs Intel / Radeon / Nvidia and brand comparisons). Now all those things above are way more complicated then building a computer since they have more parts and larger scale but its the same principle, if you take the time to look at how its supposed to be done then I think most people can handle it.
Now I will say that inefficiency does come into play. If you need some large project done fast it can be wallet efficient to pay someone to just get it done. But in my fathers case he enjoys solving problems, doesn't mind working with his hands and with the business he chose he can't create wealth when he is around the house and where he chose to live there is only so much work to be had. So for him he can work doing a job until its done(there is a lot of timing involved building a house you can't just step in and do all the P/H ing it goes in steps around things the other contractors are doing) then he can come home and play with cars or work on the house or what ever for a few hours before he goes to bed(or research something he is planning on doing).
Raid time + I've said way to much off topic + no one cares. Last thing, if it seems like I know a lot about any of those thing above... I don't know that much, I just know that if I needed to repair something I could figure out how and save myself $$ ++ Home Owners Insurance will cover the home owner doing stupid shit kk thanks.
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French has gone completely out the window save for a few simple phrases and proverbs.