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Terms of use

These terms are written in plain English. They are not legal advice.

Effective date: November 7, 2026

These terms are the rules for using toolsliving.com. By using the site, you agree to them. If you don't agree, please don't use the site.

ToolsLiving is published by ToolsLiving. "ToolsLiving," "we" and "us" in these terms mean the publisher of this site.

Safety first: please read this part

Our guides are general information for home DIY. They are not a promise that a job is safe for you, your tools or your home.

When you work on a project, you agree to:

  • Follow the maker's instructions. Read the manual for your tool, your blade, your glue or your fastener. If our guide and the manual disagree, follow the manual.
  • Follow local codes and rules. Building, electrical and plumbing codes differ by state, city and county. Some jobs need a permit.
  • Wear the right gear. Eye, ear, hand and breathing protection, as the job and the manual call for.
  • Stop when you're unsure. If a step doesn't match what you see, stop and get help.

Hire a licensed pro for:

  • Any work on gas lines, gas appliances or gas smells.
  • Electrical wiring, panels, outlets and circuits.
  • Structural work, such as load-bearing walls, beams, joists and roofs.
  • Anything your local code says needs a licensed person or a permit.

We don't give steps for wiring or gas work. Where a guide touches those topics, it tells you when to stop and call a pro.

You choose whether to do a project, and you take on the risk of doing it. Tools can cut, burn, shock and crush. Read our editorial policy for how we write and check safety steps.

What our guides are, and what they are not

  • Not professional advice. Reading a guide doesn't make us your contractor, electrician, plumber or engineer.
  • Things change. Makers change products, specs and manuals. Prices and stock change every day. We work to keep pages current, but a page may be out of date.
  • Our tools and charts give estimates. Our calculators, selectors and charts are a starting point. Check the result against your tool's manual and data sheet before you rely on it.
  • No hands-on test results yet. Our guides are built from published sources. Bench tests are planned; see how we research and check our guides.

If you find an error, please tell us. See our corrections page.

How you can use our content

ToolsLiving owns the text, charts, tables, calculators, photos and design on this site, unless we say otherwise. You may:

  • Read, print and save pages for your own use.
  • Share a link to any page.
  • Quote a short part of a page, with a link back to that page.

You may not, without our written permission:

  • Copy or republish whole pages, charts or photos.
  • Sell our content or put it behind a paywall.
  • Remove our name, credits or links from anything you share.
  • Scrape or copy the site in bulk in a way that slows it down for others.

Photos by others. Some photos come from other people under open licenses, such as from Wikimedia Commons. We credit each one. Those photos keep their own license terms, which the credit names.

Your questions, photos and comments

When you send us a question, a photo or a comment, you confirm that it's yours to share. You also let us use, edit and publish it on our site and in our newsletter, for free. We won't publish your name or your photos without asking you first.

We read what readers send, but we can't promise to answer every message. We won't answer questions about wiring or gas work by email.

Please don't send anything that is illegal, rude, someone else's private data or someone else's work.

  • Affiliate links. None yet. If we add them, they will be marked. See our affiliate disclosure.
  • Ads. None yet. If we add ads later, they will be run by an ad partner, not by us. An ad is not our advice.
  • Sponsored content. Any paid post will say "Sponsored" at the top. The FTC asks that paid content be easy to spot as paid, and we follow that. A sponsor never controls our verdict.

Your purchase is between you and the store. Stores set their own prices, returns and warranties.

We link to makers, stores, standards bodies and government sites. We don't control those sites, and we're not responsible for what they say or do. Their own terms and privacy policies apply.

No warranty

We provide the site "as is" and "as available." To the fullest extent permitted by law, we make no promises, stated or implied, about the site. That includes promises that the site is accurate, complete, current, fit for a certain purpose or free of errors and viruses.

Limits on our liability

To the fullest extent permitted by law, ToolsLiving and the people who write and run it are not liable for any harm that comes from using the site or from doing a project you read about here. That includes injury, damage to property, lost data and lost money.

Some states don't allow some of these limits. If you live in one of those states, some of these limits may not apply to you.

If you misuse the site

If you break these terms and someone makes a claim against us because of it, you agree to cover our reasonable costs, including legal fees.

Changes to these terms

We may update these terms. When we do, we change the date at the top and add a line to the change log. If you keep using the site after a change, you accept the new terms.

Contact

Questions about these terms? Email [email protected].

Sources

  1. FTC's Endorsement Guides: What People Are Asking (Federal Trade Commission)
  2. Native Advertising: A Guide for Businesses (Federal Trade Commission)

Change log: Nov 7, 2026: Launch version: no postal address, no governing-law state, no dollar cap; no affiliate links or ads yet. Nov 6, 2026: First draft for the v2 site.