DIY Tip: Free Home Repair Apps for your Smart Phone

Some folks are blessed with a close relative or friend who’s in the building trades. With just a quick phone call he’ll be over to help out with the pesky home repair problems. The rest of us are on our own.

However, if you have a smart phone, it may turn out to be the most valuable piece of gear in your tool box. There are a number of excellent free home repair apps available on the Internet just waiting for you to come by and hit the “download” button. Here are the best.

1. Expert Advice in the Palm of your Hand

Getting started properly on any project is by far the most important step. With House Repair Talk Mobile Application it’s like having a phalanx of expert consultants at the ready 24-7. This free app shows us what modern information technology is capable of doing. It combines social networking with the field of home repair. When you run into a situation that has you scratching your head, you can search forums or post your own question. Since there are no home repair problems except those common to just about every man, you stand a good chance at quickly finding the solution to your dilemma. Apple iOS.

2. Give it Your Level Best

One of the first free home repair apps to make the scene is still one of the coolest. When your kids and their pals break the hallway mirror, it not only gives them seven years bad luck, it tasks you with hanging a new one perfectly straight. This calls for the free iHandy Level, which is available as both iOS and Android apps. Android users might also want to check out Bubble level. Remember the first time you saw this app demonstrated? It was magical. A must for every smart phone user.

3. Flush Away your Problems

If your experience is anything like ours, the drains always seem to get clogged when you’re in the middle of fixing a huge Thanksgiving Day feast and your guests will be arriving in an hour. God bless Drano for giving us their free iOS Clog Doctor app. This handy bit of software will help you diagnose your drain stoppage and solve your problem. By the way, look this app over before you’re faced with an emergency. It educates you about all the tools you’ll need to free up your drains.

4. A Cool App for your Heating Woes

There comes a day in every homeowner’s life when it’s time to replace the heating and cooling system. Installing a system that is either too small or too big to handle the load leads to major headaches. BTU and Heat Calculators is a free iOS app that allows you to enter specific information about your building, including its location, exposure, materials, size and installation. It then lets you know the capacity required for your new heating and cooling unit. A similar Android app is available for a couple of dollars.

5. Color me Perfectly Matched

Every home has a few walls where the paint seems to get dinged up fairly often. When you get around to pulling out the can of spackle to make the repair, you don’t want to have to paint the whole room.

You need a good color match. The major paint companies have done their homework and provided us with the software that will do the job. Snap a photo with you iPhone or iPad using these free apps from Sherwin-Willliams, Benjamin-Moore and BEHR and they connect you with the proper color from the catalogs. Android users have these free Benjamin-Moore, Olympic (also iOS and Windows phones) and BEHR apps.