Season 22 – Ask This Old House is the kind of home-improvement television that makes you look at your leaky shower, gloomy basement, stubborn lawn, or mystery electrical panel and think, “Maybe I can fix this… after I find my safety glasses.” The season brings back the familiar formula that has made Ask This Old House so useful for homeowners: real questions, real houses, practical demonstrations, and experts who can explain complicated work without making it sound like a secret trade-school spell.
Airing across the 2023-2024 television season, Ask This Old House Season 22 includes 26 episodes covering plumbing, landscaping, electrical upgrades, painting, masonry, home safety, woodworking, heating and cooling, stormwater management, wildfire mitigation, and more. It is not just a “watch people renovate things” show. It is a season-long crash course in how houses behave, why they fail, and what a homeowner should understand before grabbing a wrench like a medieval knight reaching for a sword.
The result is a season that feels especially relevant for today’s homeowners. The projects are not fantasy renovations with unlimited budgets and suspiciously clean job sites. They are the practical problems people actually face: a shower valve leaking behind vintage tile, a basement that feels like a cave auditioning for a horror movie, a patio that collects water, a front door that needs paint, a bathroom fan that should have been installed yesterday, and a generator hookup that must be done safely or not done at all.
What Is Ask This Old House?
Ask This Old House is the viewer-question-driven companion series to the legendary This Old House. Instead of following one major renovation over many episodes, it sends trusted tradespeople into homes, workshops, yards, basements, kitchens, and driveways to solve focused problems. The show’s charm comes from its simple promise: homeowners ask, the experts answer, and nobody pretends that a 90-year-old house is going to behave like a brand-new showroom.
The familiar team includes host Kevin O’Connor, general contractor Tom Silva, plumbing and heating expert Richard Trethewey, landscape contractor Jenn Nawada, electrician Heath Eastman, mason Mark McCullough, painter Mauro Henrique, carpenter Nathan Gilbert, home technology expert Ross Trethewey, and other skilled contributors. Season 22 also gives attention to newer voices and tradespeople, including landscape contractor Lee Gilliam, while continuing the show’s long-running tradition of teaching through demonstration rather than lecture.
That matters because home improvement is easier to understand when viewers can see the work unfold. Reading “repair a leaking three-valve shower” is one thing. Watching Richard Trethewey protect original 1930s tile while solving the leak is another. One is a sentence; the other is a mini master class in patience, preservation, and not turning a bathroom wall into a demolition documentary.
Season 22 Overview: A Practical Year of Home Problems
Season 22 begins with “Girl Scout Community Garden,” a warm and useful episode in which the team helps rebuild a community garden. Tom Silva and Kevin O’Connor create a hexagonal herb planter, while Jenn Nawada and Nathan Gilbert help restore raised garden beds. It is a fitting opener because it captures the season’s personality: hands-on, community-minded, and practical without being boring.
From there, the season expands into a wide range of everyday homeowner concerns. “String Lights; Kitchen Painting” covers outdoor-grade patio lighting and color matching a retro aqua kitchen cabinet. “Shower Valve Repair; Sloped Landscape” combines plumbing repair with erosion control. “Creosote Removal; Utility Cover” moves from masonry and fireplace safety to carbon monoxide awareness and an outdoor utility-cover build. This is classic Ask This Old House: if a house has a problem, the show is willing to crawl under it, climb over it, paint it, wire it, plant around it, or gently tell it to stop leaking.
The season continues with projects such as generator hookups, brick lintel repair, double-pane window repair, rain gardens, wrought iron railings, winter prep kits, miter saw stations, front door painting, worm composting, window-to-door conversion, garage graffiti removal, nursery closet shelving, hot water troubleshooting, segmented bowl turning, wood panel painting, invasive plant control, bidet toilet installation, wildfire mitigation, shade sails, concrete walkway repairs, radiant floor retrofits, rain barrels, smart thermostat wiring, bluestone cleaning, firebox restoration, tool storage organization, rose gardening, and wall tile replacement.
Why Season 22 Works So Well for Homeowners
It Treats Small Projects Like They Matter
One of the best things about Ask This Old House Season 22 is that it respects small projects. A bathroom exhaust fan is not glamorous. A utility cover is not going to trend on social media unless it is somehow shaped like a celebrity. But these are the projects that make homes safer, more efficient, and more comfortable.
For example, the episode featuring a remote bathroom exhaust fan highlights a problem many homeowners ignore: moisture. A bathroom without proper ventilation can invite peeling paint, mildew, swollen trim, and odors that politely ask guests to leave. By showing Heath Eastman deal with old wiring while improving ventilation, the episode demonstrates an important truth: simple upgrades often become more complicated inside real walls, where previous owners have left behind electrical surprises like tiny historical artifacts with voltage.
It Balances DIY Confidence With Professional Boundaries
Season 22 encourages homeowners to learn, but it does not push reckless DIY. Electrical work, generator hookups, radiant floor retrofits, asbestos discussions, radon testing, carbon monoxide awareness, chimney safety, and structural masonry all carry real risks. The show’s strength is that it helps viewers understand what is happening while also making clear that some work belongs to licensed professionals.
The generator hookup episode is a good example. Heath Eastman helps install a proper generator connection through a transfer switch approach rather than unsafe backfeeding. That distinction is not just technical trivia. Portable generators can create carbon monoxide hazards, and improper electrical connections can endanger homeowners and utility workers. The season uses these moments to teach not only how projects are done, but why codes, devices, and professional installation exist in the first place.
It Connects Home Improvement to Climate and Resilience
Season 22 also reflects the way modern home improvement has changed. Today, homeowners are not only asking, “Can I make this look better?” They are asking, “Can my house handle heavier rain, hotter summers, wildfire risk, poor air quality, rising energy costs, and an HVAC system that seems to have a personal grudge?”
The wildfire mitigation episode is one of the season’s most important installments. The team travels to California to explore how landscaping, exterior materials, and vegetation management can reduce wildfire risk. Jenn Nawada looks at firescaping, Tom Silva studies fire-hardening the exterior, and Richard Trethewey learns about a vegetation-control method used to reduce fire spread. It is serious subject matter, but presented in a practical way: homeowners can understand the home ignition zone, remove combustible debris, choose safer materials, and rethink plant placement.
The rain garden and rain barrel episodes are equally timely. Jenn Nawada’s rain garden project in Portland and the Tulsa rain barrel segment both show how residential landscapes can reduce runoff, filter water, and make a yard more functional. A rain garden is not just a fancy puddle with flowers. Properly designed, it can collect runoff from roofs, driveways, or patios and help that water soak into the ground instead of sprinting toward the nearest storm drain like it is late for a meeting.
Best Episodes and Lessons From Season 22
Girl Scout Community Garden
The season opener is memorable because it combines woodworking, gardening, and community service. Nathan Gilbert introduces a Girl Scout troop with a garden in need of rebuilding. The team constructs a hexagonal herb planter and refreshes raised beds, creating a project that is both educational and useful. For viewers, the lesson is simple: garden structures do not have to be complicated to be meaningful. A well-built planter, healthy soil, and the right plants can turn an underused area into a productive outdoor classroom.
Shower Valve Repair; Sloped Landscape
This episode pairs two very different homeowner issues: a leaking shower valve and an eroding slope. Richard Trethewey’s plumbing segment is especially valuable because it shows the challenge of repairing old fixtures while preserving vintage tile. Many older homes contain finishes worth saving, and the episode shows that repair does not always mean demolition. Meanwhile, Lee Gilliam and Jenn Nawada’s landscape work demonstrates how boulders, ground covers, and thoughtful grading can help stabilize a slope.
Creosote Removal; Utility Cover
Fireplaces may feel cozy, but creosote buildup is not charming; it is a fire hazard wearing a soot-colored sweater. Mark McCullough’s fireplace segment explains why chimney maintenance matters, while Ross Trethewey’s carbon monoxide discussion adds another layer of home safety. Nathan Gilbert’s utility cover build rounds out the episode with a practical exterior carpentry solution.
Generator Hookup; Brick Lintel Repair
This episode is a strong example of Season 22’s mix of safety and craftsmanship. Heath Eastman helps a homeowner create a safer generator hookup, while Mark McCullough repairs a brick lintel on an 1833 home. The masonry segment is especially rich for old-house fans because it explains bonding patterns, mortar matching, and the importance of respecting historic brickwork. Translation: old bricks are not just red rectangles; they are tiny structural historians.
Rain Garden; Wrought Iron Railing
Jenn Nawada’s rain garden project in Portland shows how landscaping can solve water problems while improving curb appeal. Ross Trethewey discusses moisture meters, a useful reminder that water damage often hides before it announces itself with stains, smells, or a dramatic ceiling drip. Mark McCullough’s railing installation adds another practical safety lesson: exterior steps need secure handrails, especially where weather and age have made surfaces less forgiving.
Wildfire Mitigation
This episode is one of the season’s most modern and urgent. The team explores how homeowners can reduce fire risk through defensible space, fire-resistant design choices, landscaping strategy, and exterior hardening. The episode does not promise that any house can be made invincible, because houses are not superheroes. But it does show that risk can often be reduced through smart, layered preparation.
Radiant Floor Retrofit, Cable Railings
Richard Trethewey’s radiant floor retrofit segment speaks to homeowners interested in comfort and energy-conscious upgrades. Nathan Gilbert’s cable railing discussion adds a useful design-and-maintenance angle. Jenn Nawada also discusses the USDA Plant Hardiness Zone Map, helping gardeners understand how plant selection depends on local winter temperature patterns. It is a great episode for viewers who like their home improvement with a side of climate literacy.
Paint Dark Basement, Bat House
Mauro Henrique’s basement painting segment tackles a common problem: dark lower-level spaces that feel smaller than they are. Paint concentration, sheen, contrast, and light reflection all matter. Richard Trethewey and Mark McCullough discuss wet basement causes and mitigation, while Kevin O’Connor and Tom Silva build a bat house. It is a wonderfully odd combination, but it works. Where else can you go from basement moisture to bat real estate in under thirty minutes?
Key Home Improvement Themes in Season 22
1. Water Is Always Looking for a Weakness
If Season 22 has a quiet villain, it is water. Water erodes slopes, pools on patios, damages basements, seeps into masonry, feeds mold, ruins paint, and tests every weak spot in a house. Several episodes address water directly, including rain gardens, rain barrels, basement moisture, bathroom ventilation, patio drainage, and garden restoration. The takeaway is clear: homeowners should manage water before water manages them.
2. Old Homes Need Respect, Not Panic
Season 22 includes repairs in older homes, including work involving vintage tile, historic brick, old wiring, and an 1888 Victorian fireplace. The show does not treat older houses as fragile museum pieces, but it also does not suggest smashing everything with a sledgehammer because a wall looked at you funny. The best repairs preserve what is worth saving while updating what needs to be safer, stronger, or more efficient.
3. Energy Efficiency Is Becoming Everyday Home Improvement
Heat pump water heaters, heat pumps, smart thermostats, radiant floor retrofits, and better insulation-related thinking appear throughout the season. These are not fringe upgrades anymore. They are part of ordinary homeowner conversations about comfort, cost, and long-term performance. Season 22 presents energy efficiency in a grounded way: not as magic, but as a series of choices involving equipment, wiring, installation conditions, and household needs.
4. The Yard Is Part of the House
Landscaping in Season 22 is not treated as decoration after the “real work” is done. The yard is shown as a system that affects drainage, erosion, wildfire risk, shade, plant health, stormwater, pollinators, and outdoor living. Jenn Nawada, Lee Gilliam, and the landscaping contributors make a strong case that outdoor projects deserve the same planning and respect as interior renovations.
Where to Watch Season 22 – Ask This Old House
Availability can change by platform, station, subscription, and region, but Season 22 has been listed across the official This Old House ecosystem and major streaming services. Viewers can typically check the official This Old House website, PBS station listings, the PBS app, The Roku Channel, Prime Video, Freevee, and streaming search tools to confirm current access. Some services offer selected prior seasons for free with ads, while others may require a subscription or account.
Because streaming rights move around more often than a tape measure in a busy workshop, it is smart to search by the exact season title and episode name. Searching for “Ask This Old House Season 22 Wildfire Mitigation” or “Ask This Old House S22 E22 Paint Dark Basement Bat House” will usually work better than a vague search for “that episode with the basement and bats,” though honestly, that description does have personality.
Why Season 22 Is Worth Watching in 2026 and Beyond
Even though Season 22 originally aired in 2023 and 2024, the projects remain useful because the underlying homeowner problems are timeless. Water still runs downhill. Paint still requires prep. Old wiring still surprises people. Chimneys still need maintenance. Lawns still refuse to grow in deep shade. Basements still behave like basements. And homeowners still underestimate how many trips to the hardware store a “quick project” can require.
The season is also valuable because it gives viewers a broad vocabulary for home care. After watching, a homeowner may not be ready to install a heat pump water heater alone, but they will know better questions to ask. They may not personally repair a brick lintel, but they will understand why mortar matching matters. They may not build a bat house immediately, but they will at least know that bats need better housing than the loose shutter they have been eyeing since April.
In that sense, Ask This Old House Season 22 is less about turning every viewer into a contractor and more about turning homeowners into better decision-makers. That is the real power of the series. A confident homeowner is not someone who does every job alone. A confident homeowner knows when to DIY, when to call a pro, what questions to ask, and when to put the reciprocating saw down and slowly back away.
Experience Notes: What Watching Season 22 Feels Like as a Homeowner
Watching Season 22 – Ask This Old House feels a little like walking through your own house with new eyes. Suddenly, the patio that puddles after every storm is not just “annoying.” It is a drainage problem with possible solutions. The dark basement is not doomed to eternal gloom. It may need better paint strategy, lighting, moisture control, and a little less cardboard-box architecture. The old fireplace is not just charming; it is also a system that needs inspection, cleaning, and respect.
The most relatable part of the season is how ordinary the projects are. These are not celebrity mega-renovations where a kitchen island is large enough to require its own ZIP code. These are the repairs and improvements that real homeowners put on sticky notes, forget for six months, remember during a rainstorm, and then frantically search online at 11:42 p.m. Season 22 meets viewers in that exact moment and says, “Let’s look at the problem calmly.” That alone feels like therapy, but with more sawdust.
One experience that stands out is the way the experts explain hidden causes. A wet basement may come from grading, gutters, cracks, hydrostatic pressure, or poor drainage. A shower leak may involve old valves and delicate tile. A lawn that will not grow may be fighting shade, soil conditions, foot traffic, tree roots, or the wrong grass species. The show teaches viewers not to jump at the first visible symptom. In home improvement, the obvious problem is often just the messenger. The real issue is hiding behind a wall, under a slab, or in the soil, quietly drinking coffee.
Season 22 also gives homeowners permission to care about maintenance. That may sound boring, but maintenance is where the money is saved. Cleaning a chimney, checking for radon, improving ventilation, organizing tools, labeling circuit breakers, managing stormwater, and choosing the right plants are not glamorous weekend stories. Nobody returns from a party and says, “You won’t believe the common wire I found behind my thermostat.” Yet these small tasks prevent expensive problems and make a house easier to live in.
The season is especially helpful for people who feel intimidated by trades. The experts are skilled, but they are not mysterious. They measure, test, explain, adjust, and sometimes discover complications. That honesty matters. It reminds viewers that good work is not about never encountering problems; it is about knowing how to respond when the house says, “Surprise.”
For DIY-minded viewers, Season 22 offers plenty of inspiration: a miter saw station, a segmented bowl, a leather tote, a bat house, a mud kitchen, a utility cover, and tool storage organization. These projects are satisfying because they show craftsmanship at different scales. Some are practical. Some are creative. Some are the kind of project that makes you buy clamps, and as every woodworker knows, buying clamps is not a hobby; it is a lifestyle.
For cautious homeowners, the season is equally valuable because it highlights boundaries. Electrical panels, generator transfer switches, asbestos, radon, combustion safety, old masonry, and HVAC upgrades are not casual experiments. The show makes it easier to understand the work before hiring someone, which can lead to better conversations, better estimates, and fewer moments of nodding politely while secretly wondering whether “flashing” is a roofing term or a legal problem.
Ultimately, Season 22 feels useful because it respects the house as a living system. The roof affects the walls. The yard affects the basement. The chimney affects air quality. The wiring affects future upgrades. The soil affects the garden. The paint affects light. A home is not a collection of isolated projects; it is one big, creaky, lovable puzzle. Ask This Old House understands that, and Season 22 turns that understanding into practical, watchable lessons.
Conclusion
Season 22 – Ask This Old House is a strong, practical, and surprisingly wide-ranging season for anyone who loves home improvement, owns an older house, rents a home with mysterious quirks, or simply enjoys watching skilled tradespeople solve problems without unnecessary drama. Across 26 episodes, the season covers the kind of repairs and upgrades that make homes safer, more comfortable, more resilient, and more enjoyable.
Its biggest strength is balance. It is approachable without being shallow, technical without being dry, and fun without turning serious safety issues into entertainment fluff. From community gardens and basement paint to generator hookups, wildfire mitigation, masonry restoration, heat pump discussions, rain gardens, and bathroom ventilation, Season 22 proves that great home improvement television does not need fake emergencies. Real houses provide plenty of drama all by themselves.
For homeowners, the season offers something better than a simple checklist: it offers judgment. It helps viewers understand what to tackle, what to research, what to ask, and when to call a professional. That makes Ask This Old House Season 22 more than a TV season. It is a practical homeowner education wrapped in friendly banter, expert craftsmanship, and just enough sawdust to make everything feel authentic.
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