Small crew, six appliances, one inlet.
Point at the water in Olympia and you are pointing at Budd Inlet — Percival Landing, the Port cranes, Swantown marina, the old houses on the West Bay bluff. It went on the side of the van because it draws the map for us: the west shore where the day starts, downtown and the Capitol across the water, the Eastside and South Capitol behind them, and out along US-101 the smaller inlets and lakes — Eld, Totten, Mud Bay, Summit Lake, Black Lake — that close the half-hour circle.
What breaks here depends on what comes out of the tap and what feeds the burner. Inside the city the water is McAllister and Allison Springs groundwater and the drains run to LOTT; cross the city line and it is a private well in glacial gravel, a septic field and a propane tank, so the technician already expects crusted dishwasher elements, orange-ringed drums, fill valves down to a dribble and ranges burning yellow on the wrong orifices. Then a November windstorm knocks PSE out overnight and by breakfast the phone is full of refrigerators that never came back. Over the 4th Ave bridge the problems are older: Craftsman basements, steep stairs, two-prong outlets and a second refrigerator in the cellar that has hummed since the Carter years. The van is packed with that list in mind.
A visit, start to finish
Phone or form, ideally with the code from the display. You get a window for the arrival, then a text as the van leaves Woodland Square Loop. At the machine, instruments come out before opinions do. Whatever has failed gets an ordinary name — a scale-choked fill valve, a burned-out defrost heater, a flat-spotted drum roller — and the repair goes on the work order as a single price, $99 included. Yes, and in most cases the part is already in the van, with a full test cycle run before we pack up. No, and $99 is what the visit cost; the answer goes home with you. Either way the floor is clean and the kick panels are straight when we leave.
What we turn away
Microwaves, garbage disposals, wine fridges, iron filters and softeners, water heaters, stand-alone ice machines, galley units on boats, commercial kitchens. Name the appliance when you ring; anything outside the six gets a polite no over the phone instead of a wasted visit. The six that remain — dryer, washer, dishwasher, refrigerator and freezer, the oven with its range and cooktop, and the ice-making module inside the fridge — plus the Sub-Zero, Miele, Viking, Thermador and Wolf machines built into the waterfront kitchens, get every hour of training and every inch of shelf space.
Landlords, cabins and gate codes
Evergreen keeps the west side full of student rentals, the lakes fill with cabins, and most roads past Mud Bay end at a gate. So the owner in Seattle or Portland says yes by text while a tenant or a neighbor lets us in, the invoice and its warranty term travel by email, and the gate code is kept in the job file only until the ticket closes.
