About DIYards

You enter a project’s size and pick a material. The planner works out what to buy: posts, rails and bags of concrete for a fence; base rock, sand and pavers for a patio; concrete, base and joints for a slab. It draws the plan to scale and lists every assumption it made.

Every quantity names the document its numbers come from, and where documents disagree, the plan shows each value and the one it used.

Today the planner estimates a fence, a paver patio and a concrete slab. A deck plan waits until we have span values for its joists and beams from a state’s or city’s published code, the only kind of code value we take.

• It is not engineering. It doesn’t size footings for a load, check a retaining wall or approve a deck.
• It doesn’t issue or replace a permit. Your city, county and homeowners’ association set the rules, and an inspector has the last word.
• It doesn’t sell materials or install anything, and doesn’t pass your details to contractors. There is nothing to sign up for.
• It doesn’t show prices yet. Most stores don’t publish them openly, and we won’t guess.

The site has one owner, who acts as its publisher and editor: deciding what it covers, setting its rules on sources and approving every photo before it is shown.

Collecting documents, recording facts and writing the code are done with AI tools under those rules. The tools don’t decide a number: each one is a fact from a named document, and tests tie the planners to those facts.

A contact address is coming. It will be listed here and on the Privacy page.

No manufacturer, retailer or trade group pays us, reviews our pages or sees a plan before you do.

Brands appear because their documents print the numbers a plan needs. A maker that publishes clearer data sheets shows up more often; paying can’t change that.

Product and brand names are trademarks of their owners. Naming a product doesn’t mean its maker endorses this site, or that we endorse the product.

Today the site has no affiliate links and no ads.

If we add links to stores that pay a commission, each one will be marked as such right beside the link, and this page will list the programs we joined.

A commission will never change which number a plan uses, which material it suggests first, or which store a link goes to by default.

Each number comes from a published document: a federal standard, a state or city rule, a maker’s data sheet, or one printed value from a trade association. How we store them, check them and choose between them is on the Methodology page; fixes are listed under Corrections.