Terms, privacy & accessibility

This manual is offered free, as general education. In plain language: use it at your own risk, we collect nothing about you, and we try to make it usable by everyone. The details follow. Last updated October 23, 2026.

1. Terms of use and disclaimer

By using this site you agree to these terms. If you do not agree, please do not use it.

Educational content only

Everything here is general information, written for people setting up a first home. It is not professional, medical, legal, financial, engineering or safety advice, and it is not a substitute for the judgment of a qualified professional for your specific situation. Leases, homes, buildings, states and households vary; what applies to yours may differ from what is described.

Personalized content

The "Your home" boxes, calendar, dates and calculator are generated automatically from what you type into the setup form, using general rules of thumb. They are planning estimates, not guarantees. Check every date and number against your lease, your providers and your own home.

Safety

• Test every smoke alarm when you move in and once a month after that, and replace any alarm 10 years after its manufacture date. If your home has a gas or other fuel-burning appliance or an attached garage, make sure there is a working carbon monoxide alarm near the sleeping areas. Ask your landlord in writing about any missing alarm; installing or wiring alarms is their job or an electrician's.
• If a carbon monoxide alarm sounds, get everyone to fresh air outside and call 911 or the fire department from there.
• If you smell gas, leave the building. Do not use light switches, phones or anything electrical near the smell. Call the gas company or 911 from outside or a neighbor's home.
• Know two ways out of every room and a meeting place outside. In an apartment building, use the stairs, not the elevator, in a fire.
• Stay in the kitchen while frying, grilling, boiling or broiling. Cover a grease fire with a lid and turn off the burner; never use water. Never heat your home with an oven.
• Never mix cleaning products, especially bleach with ammonia or with acid cleaners such as toilet bowl cleaner. Follow each label, open a window, and keep products in their original containers, closed and out of reach of children and pets. For a possible poisoning, call Poison Help at 1-800-222-1222; for trouble breathing or collapse, call 911.
• Keep the refrigerator at 40°F or below and the freezer at 0°F or below, checked with an appliance thermometer. Do not leave perishable food out more than 2 hours, or 1 hour above 90°F.
• Before buying or accepting secondhand items, search recalls at cpsc.gov/recalls and check mattresses and upholstered pieces for signs of bed bugs. Do not use a crib made before June 28, 2011 or any drop-side crib.
• Anchor furniture with drawers, doors or shelves, and TVs, to the wall as the Consumer Product Safety Commission advises. Renters: ask your landlord in writing before drilling. Anchoring reduces the risk of a tip-over; it does not remove it.
• Keep anything that can burn at least 3 feet from heaters. Plug major appliances and space heaters directly into a wall outlet, and do not run cords under rugs.
• Reset a tripped breaker or a GFCI outlet only as described in this manual. A breaker that trips often, a warm outlet or switch plate, a burning smell, sparks or water near electrical equipment needs your landlord or a licensed electrician.
• Leases, deposits, entry rules and repair rights vary by state and city. This manual shows examples and does not give legal advice. Ask your state's tenant guide, a legal aid office or a lawyer about your situation.

Third-party links and products

The site links to tutorials, suppliers, books and other resources we found useful. We do not control those sites, do not endorse or guarantee anything on them, receive no payment or commission from them, and are not responsible for their content, availability, accuracy or practices. Product and brand names mentioned belong to their respective owners and are used only to identify them.

No warranty; limitation of liability

The site and its content are provided "as is" and "as available," without warranties of any kind, express or implied, including accuracy, completeness, fitness for a particular purpose and non-infringement. To the fullest extent permitted by law, Field Assembly LLC, Reassembly and the people who made this site are not liable for any loss, injury or damage, direct or indirect, arising from your use of the site or reliance on its content. Some jurisdictions do not allow certain limitations, so some of this may not apply to you.

Governing law

These terms are governed by the laws of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, without regard to its conflict-of-law rules. Any dispute arising from the site or these terms will be brought in the state or federal courts located in Massachusetts, and you consent to their jurisdiction.

Changes and availability

We may change, pause or remove the site or any part of it at any time without notice. We have no obligation to keep it available or up to date.

2. Privacy

Short version: this site does not collect, store or sell any information about you. If you choose to email us, we receive your address and your message.

• No accounts, no sign-up. You never need to give us an email address to use the pages. There is nothing to join.
• No analytics, no tracking, no advertising, no cookies. The site sets no cookies and includes no third-party scripts, pixels or embedded content. Fonts are served from this site, not from a font service.
• Your setup stays on your device. What you type into the setup form, and the progress checkboxes, are saved only in your browser's local storage so the site can show them back to you. They are never transmitted to us. Clearing your browser data, or using the "Clear my setup" button, deletes them.
• Share links contain your setup. The "copy a link" feature encodes your answers into the web address itself so you can open them on another device or send them to a helper. Anyone who has that link can see those answers. Do not put anything in the setup form that you would not want in a link you share.
• If you email us, we use your address only to reply, and we do not add it to any list.
• Hosting logs. The site is hosted on Cloudflare, which, like any web host, processes technical request data (such as your IP address, browser type and the pages requested) to deliver the site and protect it from abuse, under Cloudflare's privacy policy. We do not use that data to identify or track visitors.
• Links to other sites take you to services with their own privacy practices.
• Children. The site is not directed at children under 13 and we knowingly collect no information from anyone.

3. Accessibility

We want this manual to be usable by everyone, including people who use screen readers, keyboards, magnification or high contrast. The site is built to follow the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1 at level AA. Specifically:

• Semantic HTML with headings, landmarks, lists and tables with header rows; a "skip to content" link; visible keyboard focus on every control.
• Every form field has a label; checkboxes and radio buttons are labeled; the menu button reports its state.
• Text and interface colors meet contrast minimums in both light and dark modes; information is never conveyed by color alone.
• Text resizes with browser settings, and the Text size control in the menu makes it larger on every page (saved in this browser only); layouts reflow to narrow screens; no content flashes or moves on its own.
• Buttons, checkboxes, form fields and menu items are at least 44 pixels tall, so they are easy to tap.
• Diagrams have text descriptions; icons in the navigation are decorative and accompanied by text.

Known limitations: wide reference tables scroll horizontally on small screens, and printable pages depend on your browser's print settings. If anything on this site is hard for you to use, please tell us through fieldassembly.net and we will try to fix it.

4. Copyright and sharing

© 2026 Field Assembly LLC. The text, structure and code of this manual are copyrighted. You are welcome to use the manual for your own home, share the link freely, print pages for personal use, and quote short passages with attribution. Please do not republish the manual or substantial parts of it, sell it, or present it as your own. Linked third-party material belongs to its respective owners. The self-hosted fonts (Cormorant Garamond and Inter) are used under the SIL Open Font License.

Built by Reassembly for Field Assembly LLC.