'Tool Library' quietly saving Franklin County residents in the know big bucks

Have you ever been thwarted in your home improvement or repair projects by the need for that certain tool that would make things so much easier, but you don't have it and you're going to use it maybe once or twice in your life if you did?

Listen up weekend landscape warriors, do-it-yourself plumbers, carpenters and auto mechanics, and YouTube-guided home appliance fix-it wannabes, for this story will pass this way but once.

There is a nondescript industrial building hidden among the warehouses just south of John Glenn Columbus International Airport's runways. You turn into the gravel-and-dirt parking lot, cross the aging railroad tracks, and go until you see the words "Tool" and "Library" painted around the corner from each other on the gray cinderblock walls of a building. An arrow points to a garage door.

Welcome to Modcon Living's Tool Library at 3840 E. Fifth Avenue, a publicly subsidized tool warehouse that has been saving big bucks for an in-the-know group of Franklin County residents fortunate enough to have stumbled across this no-frills outfit.

Inside the plain building are thousands of tools that, for a nominal annual fee — or possibly for no fee at all, depending on your income — you can "borrow" for no checkout charge. They can be checked out for one to 21 days, depending on the tool involved.

"We're trying to get the word out because obviously we don't have an advertising budget or anything," said Mike Ream, supervisor over the cache of tools, slung from the walls and piled up on shelves.

What can you rent — er, excuse us, borrow? Well, how much time do you have?

Air compressors; drills; generators; ladders; platforms; table saws; putty knives; levels; lawn aerators; allen wrenches; grinders; dollies; auto jacks; car-battery chargers; tillers; bicycle trailers (OK, that's not a tool); bolt cutters; nail guns; lawn spreaders; carpet seaming irons; caulk guns; clamps; chairs (again, not really a tool); leaf blowers; hedge trimmers; dibblers (stick-like tools used to make holes in the soil for seeds and seedlings); lawn edgers; electric floor-tile scrapers; lawn mowers — well, you get the picture. Just about anything.

Building a wooden privacy fence? Check out a gasoline-powered, two-person post-hole driller.

Moving to a new apartment? Could a furniture dolly help? You definitely don't need to buy a brand new shop vac to clean out the garage.

House siding looking a little fungal? Maybe a power washer could do the trick.

You can even borrow a bucket, an extension cord, a common straw broom, a screwdriver or a hammer. And this is just scratching the surface of the very long list at the "library," which has more than 300 different categories of tools and over 4,000 individual tools.

At the top of the list is a BCS walk-behind tractor that attaches to various implements for small-scale farming, like a tiller, a plow or a weed mower. It has its own special, more-stringent policies, but is available for two days at a time and is pulled on a trailer.

The most popular tools? During the summer, lawn mowers. Other times of the year, table saws for people doing home improvements, such as kitchen or bathroom remodels, Ream said. For people moving a refrigerator or large appliance, they have the heavy-duty strap-in dollies, and smaller dollies perfect for people moving into a new house or apartment.

"We even have moving blankets" to keep your furniture from getting scratched, Ream said.

Kenneth Hunt II, 52, who lives near German Village, is in on the secret. Hunt was returning several yard tools last week around lunchtime.

"I'm power washing the back yard and the front yard, and then I tilled, because I need to grow some grass, and then I had to level the yard" with a roller, Hunt said. He didn't want to buy any of those tools to use "probably once a year, because you get your yard ready for the holiday or for spring.

"I found out about (the library) during COVID, actually, through my neighbor."

Fred Kilonzo, 49, of Columbus, has been borrowing tools for four years, mostly using lawn mowers and certain other tools for home building projects. Has it saved him money? "Yeah, you don't have to buy them," he said.

"Because our gas (powered) tools are so popular, we actually had to put a one-business-day limit on it," Ream said. "Everything else is seven days. You check something out, you get it for seven days, and you have the ability to renew it,"

Twice, actually, meaning you potentially could keep it for 21 straight days, he said.

And while gasoline-powered tools are limited to one day, there's a way to work that system, too. Since the library is closed on Sundays and Mondays, if you check something out Saturday morning, not surprisingly the most crowded day of the week, you don't have to return it until the following Tuesday by 6 p.m. (wink, wink).

Even if you're required to pay the full annual membership price of $50, that's the cost of renting a chainsaw from a local Columbus commercial tool-renting store for four hours (we're not naming names) or about one-third the cost of buying a new standard chainsaw retail.

If you're a student, the annual membership fee is only $25. And then there's the "special project" $15 membership, which makes you a 30-day member. If none of those work, there's a pay-what-you can membership, and a free membership, with proof you meet low-income guidelines.

When you apply for membership, you are required to sign a liability waiver in case you injure yourself with the tool.

Gasoline-powered tools go out with the tanks full, and they prefer them returned without being refilled, for which you pay a $5 gas charge. If you return a tool late, there are late fees.

And if you don't return a tool at all, you could get reported to Columbus police for theft. The service is for homeowners or renters — not contractors — and use of the tools is limited to the person's place of residence only. People who own multiple residences are required to pay additional membership dues of $25 per unit.

If you're believed to be abusing the very generous system, the library ultimately "reserves the right to refuse the loan of any tool."

If you break a tool, other than normal wear and tear, the cost to fix it is $25 an hour.

That's when it gets sent to the back room, where repairman Henry Scott, 65, can fix just about anything in the realm of tools — including electric motors if need be. His job interview basically consisted of being shown five lawn mowers that weren't running and having four of them purring within an hour, he said.

"I've been doing it since I was 16, mostly self-taught," Scott said. "I love working with my hands. I cannot stand to sit."

The whole idea started in the 1970s with the city of Columbus. To encourage people to maintain their homes, the city had trucks that would drive around town and lend people tools, said Amy Flynn, Modcon Living's executive director.

"A lot of the clients that they were serving benefitted from having that (mobile) tool library," so when the city exited the program, Modcom, formerly known as Rebuilding Together Central Ohio, a 12-employee nonprofit which promotes affordable home ownership through repairs and home rehabilitation, took over the library around 2004, she said.

The city's mobile tool trucks were eliminated to save money. Franklin County has provided $30,000 a year to help subsidize low-income renters, and the city chipped in $86,500 in 2021 to help expand the tool list, while the rest of the funding comes from the memberships themselves, Flynn said.

Scott said he is amazed how few people know about the library. Even the friends he bowls with have never heard of it.

"You need a ratchet? You need a socket? You come right here, get the socket and ratchet, the set, you've got it for a week," he said. "Bring it back, you don't pay nothing, as long as you bring it back on time."

wbush@gannett.com

@Reporterbush

This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: Tools, tools, tools, all for free for a small annual membership fee