The Trades AlmanacA homeowner's reference for every system in the house

How we make money

The front porch of a classic American farmhouse with a rocking chair and pumpkins on the steps in autumn
The front porch of a classic American farmhouse with a rocking chair and pumpkins on the steps in autumn

Short version: this site is free to read, carries no display advertising, and is paid for by the sale of FourHome replacement plumbing parts on Amazon. When a page mentions a part, it may show a box linking to that part on Amazon. If you buy it, FourHome earns the sale. That is the whole model.

The product boxes

Each product box on the site is drawn from one data file, which lists FourHome’s catalog of cartridges, stems, seats and repair kits by the OEM part numbers they replace. Boxes appear next to the words they illustrate, not at the end of the page, and only where the part is the subject of the sentence. A page about how a P-trap works has no product box, because FourHome does not sell P-traps.

Every box carries a line saying the site is published by the team behind FourHome, and every Amazon link is marked as sponsored for search engines.

Future stores

The team behind FourHome plans stores in other categories, including heating and cooling parts, electrical devices and hardware. When those exist, pages in those sections will carry product boxes the same way, and this page will be updated to name them. Until then, the HVAC, electrical and carpentry sections link to no store.

Amazon tracking

Links to Amazon may carry an Amazon Attribution tag, a query string that lets Amazon tell FourHome that a sale came from this site. The tag identifies the site, not you; see the privacy policy for what this site does and does not collect.

What the money does not change

The maintenance calendar, the explainers and the glossary are written from government, university, standards-body and manufacturer sources, and each page lists them. A task is on the calendar because an agency or extension service recommends it, not because a part is sold for it; most tasks on the site have no product attached. Where a part is shown, the explainer still tells you how to tell whether you need it, and when the better answer is a plumber.

If any page reads as if the product came first, we would like to know; the publisher’s address is in the footer.