Can you do basic home maintenance repair jobs without having to Google how-to directions or videos first?
Equipment rental company BigRentz wanted to find out how adept we are about DIY home repair projects without relying on looking up the answers online. The answer is: not very adept.
It came up with a list of basic home repairs, such as unclogging a drain, stopping a toilet from running or patching a hole in the wall.
“A full 38% of the Americans surveyed are unable to perform any of the maintenance tasks listed without the help of the internet,” Jim Arabia, vice president of marketing at BigRentz, told WTOP.
While that may sound like a bad thing, it is actually a good example of how the internet has made our lives a whole lot easier.
“Fifteen to 20 years ago, if you wanted to learn best practices for patching a drywall hole, you’d go down to Ace Hardware or speak to your local handyman. Today, you don’t have to. You have all these videos and how-to guides from beginners to pros and everything in between.”
Based on Google data, the home repair task most frequently searched for is “how to fix a leaky faucet.” That gets searched for about 1,000 times a month.
With age comes experience. The survey found that 85% of those 65 years and older surveyed could perform at least some of the tasks without an internet tutorial. And 85% of all of those surveyed, regardless of age, said they could perform at least one of the listed tasks without research.
BigRentz conducted the study using Google Surveys in July 2019, with 1,000 completed responses.
Below are results for BigRentz six basic DIY repair tasks.
