Write for us
If you build decks, inspect them, or have spent enough time around them to know where homeowners go wrong, we would like to hear from you.
What we publish
This site is calculators and reference material. The writing that fits alongside it is practical, specific and checkable: how a job is actually done, what a code requirement means on site, or where an estimate goes wrong. Pieces that work here tend to come from someone who has done the work.
- How-to pieces with the sequence, the tools and the point where people get it wrong.
- Code explainers that name the table or section and say what it means for a real deck.
- Cost breakdowns that show the arithmetic rather than quoting a figure.
- Field experience — failures you have seen, why they happened, what the fix cost.
- Regional pieces where local conditions genuinely change the answer, such as frost depth, coastal corrosion or snow load.
House rules
- No invented figures. If you cite a number, say where it came from. If it is an estimate, call it one.
- One outbound link to your own site or profile, in the byline. Links inside the body have to earn their place by being useful to the reader.
- No affiliate links in contributed pieces.
- Original work only. We check.
- If a language model helped you draft it, that is fine — but a person has to stand behind every claim in it and be able to answer questions about them.
How to pitch
Send a short note with the working title, two or three sentences on the angle, and one line on why you are the person to write it. A link to something you have written before helps but is not required. Do not send a finished draft first — we would rather agree the angle than have you write something we cannot use.
Pitch form
Questions
Do you pay for contributions?
Not at present. What a contributor gets is a byline, a link to their own site or profile, and a piece that sits alongside tools people actually use rather than in a content farm. If that trade does not work for you, that is a fair reason to pass.
What do you not accept?
Anything written primarily to place a link, anything produced by a language model without a person who can answer questions about it, general-interest lifestyle writing, and anything that would need invented statistics to hold together. We also decline pieces that duplicate a page we already have — we would rather improve the existing page.
How long should a piece be?
As long as the subject needs and no longer. In practice that has meant 1,200 to 2,000 words for a how-to or a code explainer. A tight 900-word piece that answers one question completely beats a padded 2,500-word one every time.
How long until I hear back?
We read everything that arrives and reply to pitches we want to take further, usually within a week or two. If you have not heard back after that, assume it is not a fit for now — you are welcome to pitch something else.