Earl LeBlancBayou Lafourche, Louisiana

Catch the $5 problem before it becomes a $4,000 bill.

99 practical fixes for the house, yard and storm season. Most cost under $50. Each one shows you what to catch early, what to do now, what it costs today — and the repair bill waiting if you ignore it.

Get the book — $37 See all 99 fixes

99Problems to catch early

<$50Most fixes cost

7 daysMoney back

Before It Gets Expensive — book cover, Earl LeBlanc at the side of his house

“

Sixteen dollars of string, or a foundation crew. That gap is never expertise. It's timing.

Chapter Seven

Why I wrote this book

I once let a five-dollar fix turn into a four-thousand-dollar bill.

It was small enough to put off. That was the mistake. I knew it needed attention, figured I would get to it later, and kept walking past it.

By the time “later” came, I was not paying for the little fix anymore. I was paying for everything the little problem had been allowed to damage.

About $5 → about $4,000.

That is the entire reason this book exists: to help you notice the cheap problem while it is still cheap.

Three small fixes. Thousands of dollars you may not have to spend later.

Every example follows the same math: a small cost now versus the much larger bill that can show up when the same problem is ignored.

Food coloring in the tank

A toilet running at three in the morning.

Ten drops of dye in the tank, wait twenty minutes, look in the bowl. Color means the flapper is gone. New flapper, nine dollars, fifteen minutes.

About $12 — versus a water bill that climbs every month and a rusted fill valve at $180 installed.

Pouring standing water out of a plant saucer

The standing-water audit

Mosquitoes bred in your own yard.

Every plant saucer, gutter elbow, tarp fold and bucket, walked once a week after rain. Bti dunks in anything that has to hold water.

Free, about $26 a season for dunks — versus a mosquito service at $70 to $100 a month that still can't reach under your deck.

Measuring the slope of a yard with mason line and a tape

Six inches in ten feet, checked with a string

A corner that's still wet two days later.

Mason line, a line level, two stakes and a ruler. If the ground doesn't drop six inches in the first ten feet, the water is walking back to your slab.

About $16 — versus a French drain at $1,500, or a foundation repair that starts at $8,000.

The math is simple: spend tens now to avoid hundreds or thousands later.

Every method puts both numbers on the page: what the fix costs while it is small, and what the same problem can cost once it becomes contractor work. One avoided repair can pay for the book many times over.

$16 of string and stakesora foundation crew

$45 a year in filtersora coil cleaning at $250 to $450

$38 of steel wool and sealantorrats in the attic and a $600 exclusion job

$10 of Bti dunksora mosquito contract, every month, forever

What's inside.

Six parts, thirty-eight chapters, ninety-nine methods set right into the text where the problem comes up.

Part I — Living with Louisiana weather

18 methods

Film on the west glass. The nine-dollar filter, changed on the calendar. Two hygrometers and a number to aim at. The pencil line and the dated photograph. Reading the attic thermometer and clearing the soffits.

Part II — Water has a mind of its own

16 methods

Six inches in ten feet. A quarter inch of fall every ten feet of gutter. Chalking the wet rafter during the rain. The meter test that takes fifteen minutes. Poly over the dirt in the crawlspace.

Part III — The things that move in

18 methods

Boric acid trays. Thirty pea-size dabs of gel bait. The April swarm check and the screwdriver probe. Rat exclusion without poison. Twelve traps set the right way. Flour on the floor to find the door.

Part IV — Porch, yard, garden

21 methods

Two feet of clear ground against the wall. Tick control safe for pets. Putting in the muscadine. Rooting a fig cutting in January. Killing a stump so it quits sprouting. A rain barrel that can't breed mosquitoes.

Part V — Storms, power, and the Gulf way of preparing

14 methods

The May kit, bought at May prices. Labeling the shutoffs while the lights are on. The coin on the cup of ice. Twenty feet, downwind, and a cord that can carry it. The six-week lap after the storm.

Part VI — Keeping the house

12 methods

Two laps a year, hung on weather instead of dates. The one book the house lives in. Three written quotes and a license lookup. And the last box in the book: where to start, if you're starting this weekend.

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A page from the book.

Memory is a poor witness in a house. Everybody believes they'll remember what that ceiling ring looked like in March. Nobody does. What people remember is a feeling, usually the feeling that it looks about the same, which is what we all want it to look like.

Chapter Three — The Rooms That Tell on Themselves

Then the box: a No. 2 pencil, a phone with a camera, four steps, and what a growing stain costs once the drywall comes down.

Ninety-nine things is a lot to hand somebody. So the book ends with an order.

This weekend, for nothing

Walk the foundation the morning after a rain. Pull the mulch back. Dump the standing water. Find the water shutoff and turn it. Run the meter test.

The first month, about $165

Two hygrometers, two appliance thermometers, a moisture meter, a soil thermometer, a hundred-foot tape and a line level. Six filters. A notebook. That's every instrument the book measures with.

The first year, three phone calls

A termite inspection, which is often free. Three arborist quotes in December. One diagnostic visit while the problem is still one problem.

If only one thing gets done, make the water go away from the house.

Five things this book will not help you with.

Not out of caution for its own sake. These are the specific ways careful people get hurt or turn a repair into a rebuild, and the book says plainly, every time, where your part ends and the licensed man's begins.

Electrical panels and wiring. A labeled breaker you can flip is yours. Anything behind the panel cover is not.
Gas. No connection, no fitting, no relighting.
Roofs, and anything on a ladder above the first floor. Single-story gutter work is in the book. Roofs are not.
Structure and serious water. A moving foundation, a sagging roofline, floodwater, sewage, or growth over about ten square feet.
Trees near lines, and anything overhead. That belongs to an arborist with insurance you have asked to see.

And two things the channel got wrong, corrected in print: the granules in the yellow bottle don't dissolve a stump, and the homemade detergent recipe makes soap, not detergent. The book tells you what does work instead.

Earl LeBlanc checking a ceiling with a flashlight

The man at the bottom of the ladder.

My name is Earl LeBlanc. I'm sixty-two, and I live in the Bayou Lafourche country in south Louisiana, on ground my family has held longer than I've been alive. I hold no license and never worked a trade. What I have is fifty years of watching the same buildings sit on the same wet ground, and down here a mistake in a house doesn't take thirty years to show itself. It takes two or three.

Everything in this book comes out of the state universities and the extension services, and it's free to read. I put it in one place, in plain order, with the prices.

The book

Before It Gets Expensive

99 small fixes built around one goal: keep cheap problems from becoming expensive repairs. Leaks, moisture, toilets, pests, drainage, AC, storms, power outages, yard problems and more. Most fixes cost under $50; many of the bills they help you catch early run into the hundreds or thousands.

$37

The full book, 500+ pages — read it on a phone, a tablet, a Kindle or a computer, or print the pages you needIncluded
99 methods with materials, quantities, numbered steps, and both pricesIncluded
The Fixes at a Glance table — every method, every cost, one placeIncluded
The starting order: this weekend, this month, this yearIncluded
Seven days to read it. If it isn't what I said it is, write me and I'll send the money back.Guarantee

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Questions people ask.

I don't live in Louisiana. Does it apply?

If you have heat, humidity, termites, or hurricanes, yes. It's written for the Gulf Coast, but the methods are the same from Houston to the Carolinas. Prices are US hardware-store prices in 2026 dollars.

Is this the same as the videos?

Eight of the 99 methods are on the channel. The other 91 aren't. And the eight are longer here, with the quantities and the costs the videos don't have room for.

Do I need tools?

Most methods use what's already in a kitchen drawer. Where a tool is needed, the box says which one and what it costs, and it's usually something you'll own for twenty years. Every instrument in the book, bought once, comes to about $165.

How do I read it?

It downloads the moment you pay and opens on a phone, a tablet, a Kindle or a computer. The boxes are one page each, so print the ones you need and leave the rest on the screen.

What if it isn't for me?

Write me within seven days and the money comes back. No form, no questions.

Ninety-nine fixes, most under fifty dollars, and the order to do them in.
Get the book — $37