Collins Complete DIY Manual: An essential tool for novices, DIY enthusiasts and professionals, covering decorating, electricity, plumbing and more

My backgrond is technical (I'm an engineer) but I have a limited amount of DIY experience. Faced with the prospect of maintaining a house, I wanted to learn more about DIY.I was a little hesitant about buying a DIY book as I thought I'd just find everything I need online. True, there are many good discussion boards on DIY topics. However, I find that a comprehensive manual is an excellent starting point. Unless you know exactly what you're looking for, searching the web is difficult. And if you don't know very much about the subject, it's hard to assess the quality of online advice.So I went ahead and bought the Collins guide. When it arrived, I was surprised at the heft of the book. It's larger and heavier than I expected. Printing quality is very good and it's printed in colour throughout. It's filled with a mixture of drawn illustrations and photographs, and both are of excellent quality.The book is clearly laid out and structured, with plenty of subheadings helpfully printed on page margins. It's very easy to find what you are looking for. The instructions are generally very easy to follow. Compared to, say, a Haynes car service manual, the high quality printing makes it easy to tell exactly what you are looking at.That said, I would probably not use this as my only source of information. An all-in-one guide is great as a good starting point. However, I tend to cross-check any advise against other sources. This is how I like to use the book: find out the basics about a topic; then, as you know the basics and the vocabulary, go online to confirm the advise and find other opinions. Used like this, it's a fantastic starting point for any DIY project, both as a complete guide for novices and as a reference work for experienced DIYers.

It's hard to overstate how useful this book is! This is a hefty book that covers just about everything you'd want to know about how your house works, with a lot of illustrations. In the past I had always used YouTube to guide my DIY repairs. The problem is YouTube (and the internet) is great at providing detailed and lengthy step-by-step instructions but is often bad at explaining the big picture: how everything fits together and the many variations of the systems and designs found in different houses. This book bridges that gap. I'm a beginner and have found this book illuminating and easy to understand, but I think it would also be a useful resource for just about anyone who isn't a complete expert in every single aspect of house maintenance.I realise that this book is over a decade old and slightly dated. I still give it 5-stars because I haven't been able to find another book or resource that competes with it (including the internet).

Useful book. Still got it laying around.

I've only had this book for a few hours, but it's already made me feel a lot more comfortable about chasing cables in our new house for an upcoming rewire. I've got a good grounding in electronics, but house wiring is new to me and it's rapidly cleared up some terms and made a whole bunch of decisions for me.What doesn't come across at all in the previews (to me, anyway) is that this is a lovely big book - a proper reference hardback. It weighs a lot, but it's lovely to flick through. The bits I've read are clear, concise and have excellent illustrations and diagrams. For £25 it's no brainer for anyone embarking on a project.

I consider myself practical, but always hesitate before attacking serious DIY - bluntly, while I can't see why it would be hard, I've never done it before and have that nagging doubt I'll completely stuff it up.Firstly, after looking through books covering the similar subject, it would appear to be agreed this is the best one (so I bought it).Secondly, now I've got my mitts on it, I can see why. Book is broken down by potential jobs and provides extremely clear guidance in text and pictures as to how to complete it. More importantly it appears to scatter in excellent advice and tips covering things I hadn't considered and why I really should consider them (i.e. if you don't do this, this might happen, and then you'll spend the next few weeks cursing and having to fix it).If you're new to DIY on something it's fantastic in telling you what to do and providing you some confidence. If you think you can do something without a book, it's still worth having just to check there's not some gotcha out there you've forgotten.The books an absolute bargain for the information that's crammed into it, undoubtedly due to all the revisions and honing it's been through over the years.