About The Repair Brief
The Repair Brief is a small, independent desk for homeowners who are holding a repair quote, a warranty card or an insurance letter and need to know what the number means before they say yes.
Every article starts with a document you can open yourself: a manufacturer’s warranty PDF, a city permit fee schedule, a state contractor statute, an insurer’s policy form. We read the document, work the numbers for one specific situation, and build a calculator so you can run the same math with your own quote, your own purchase year and your own deductible. The answer on the page is a worked example; the answer that matters is the one the calculator gives you.
What we cover
- Repair or Replace. Furnaces, air conditioners, water heaters, refrigerators, dishwashers, roofs and sewer lines: when the quote still beats a new unit, and when it stops.
- Permits & Contracts. What a city charges for a permit, how much a contractor may legally ask up front in your state, what a change order has to say in writing.
- Warranties & Claims. Parts-and-labor clocks, registration deadlines, home-warranty service fees, and how a replacement-cost insurance policy actually pays out.
What we do not do
We do not rank products, we do not publish “best of” lists, and we do not take money from the manufacturers, contractors or insurers we write about. We are not a contractor, a lawyer or an insurance agent; where a decision depends on your contract or your state, the article says so and links to the source.
Who writes it
Dana Whitfield edits The Repair Brief and is responsible for every figure on the site. Each number is read from the cited document on the date shown under the headline. When a warranty term, a fee or a statute changes, the article is updated and the change is logged on the corrections page. Our working rules are on the How We Check Numbers page.
Questions, a quote you want us to look at, or a number you think we got wrong: [email protected].