Also on the truck · Artondale & Purdy
The rest of the lineup
$99 to meter it, one figure on the ticket, coverage printed on the invoice — identical for every machine in Artondale & Purdy.
A refrigerator in Artondale and Purdy that came back from a PSE outage warm, clicking or frosted is not always finished.
Weekdays 8–6 · Saturday 9–3 · closed Sunday · truck based on 4425 Harbor Country Dr NW
$99 to meter it, one figure on the ticket, coverage printed on the invoice — identical for every machine in Artondale & Purdy.
The windstorms that roll up Henderson Bay between November and February leave a particular trail: a refrigerator in a kitchen off Purdy Dr that hums but never cools, a chest freezer in a pole barn that thawed over three dark days, a French-door whose control board caught a surge when the power returned. Artondale and Purdy is acreage country, so those calls arrive from long gravel driveways off Hwy 302, from the lanes behind Peninsula High and from the older ranches along Ray Nash Dr. The truck runs Hwy 16 north from the shop, drops onto Purdy Dr and is at most of these houses before the coffee is cold.
A power event does three things to a refrigerator here. A hard restart while the compressor is still under pressure trips the overload, and a relay that was already tired stays open. A surge on the return leaves a main board with a dead inverter driver, so the fan runs and the compressor never starts. And a generator wired in for the outage, if its output is dirty, confuses an inverter compressor into a fault it will not clear. We see all three every winter, usually in the same week. The fix is rarely the whole machine, which is why we test before anyone decides.
Almost always a defrost problem: the evaporator has frosted into a solid block and the air path to the fresh-food side is closed. We pull the back panel and meter the heater, the bi-metal and the sensor, change the one that failed, then melt the ice out completely so the block is not back within the week.
The compressor’s start relay or its overload protector keeps cycling. The compressor windings get metered before anything else; when they read sound, a relay off the truck has it cooling again the same visit. If a winding is open, we tell you that before any repair number is written, and you decide from there.
Either the board lost its inverter output to a surge or the compressor took the hit on the restart. Line voltage at the receptacle, then board output, then winding resistance is the order we work in, and the answer comes in plain words with the meter readings behind it.
Usually a defrost drain frozen solid, common in the damp garages and kitchens along Carr Inlet where the box sits cold and wet all winter. We thaw the drain, clear the trough and check the defrost heater so meltwater leaves through the drain instead of pooling under the drawers.
Doors left ajar through the outage, a door seal that has quit sealing, or a thermostat that drifted. We check the gasket, the door hinge and the thermostat, clean the condenser, and confirm the compressor is not overheating in a damp garage before writing a price.
On the Sub-Zero and Thermador units in the bigger houses toward Kopachuck we test the condenser fan, clean the coil that salt air has furred, and meter the sealed system before quoting. Most columns that drift warm have a dirty condenser or a dead fan, not a lost charge.
Our first meter reading is at the receptacle, since after a windstorm the fault is sometimes the circuit and not the refrigerator. Then the compressor: winding resistance, current draw on start, whether the overload is hot. Then the board, then the defrost circuit, then the door gaskets, in that order, with the meter doing the talking. If the condenser coil is packed with dog hair and the grey felt a garage on the water grows, it comes out and gets cleaned before any judgment is made. Only once the failed part is known does a repair number get written. The truck carries most of the refrigerator parts that fail on the peninsula, which is why the repair usually happens in the same visit.
Whirlpool, GE, Samsung and LG refrigerators, along with Frigidaire, KitchenAid, Kenmore and Amana, are on our schedule every week in Artondale and Purdy, plus the Sub-Zero, Thermador and Viking columns in the newer houses along Henderson Bay. Owners who are in Seattle during the week can approve the repair by text and receive the photo, invoice and warranty by email; a gate code and a note about the dog is all we need. Approving the refrigerator repair means the $99 diagnostic dissolves into that one figure; saying no means a bill of $99 and nothing else. No refrigerator repair here is priced ahead of the diagnostic, and every figure is on paper.
Yes. Whenever the schedule allows, a warm refrigerator takes a same-day window, and the peninsula side of the bridge is our shortest run. Shift what you can into a cooler, resist opening the doors, and leave the plug in unless the breaker is tripping, because the technician wants to hear what it does on power.
Usually. A surge takes out a relay or a board far more often than a compressor. The compressor windings are the first thing we meter, so you will know within the first minutes whether the sealed system survived. If it did not, we tell you so and stop there, and you owe the $99.
A clean generator does not. A cheaper unit with rough output can trip an inverter compressor into a protective fault or stress a control board over several days. If your refrigerator started misbehaving during a generator run in Purdy, mention it when you call; it changes what we test first and how we read the board.
We do, including chest and upright freezers in shops and barns off Hwy 302. Damp garages near the water corrode condenser coils and fan motors early, so we check both. Tell us if the freezer is in a detached building so the technician brings the right cord and light for the job.
No. Artondale and Purdy is well within our area and there is no mileage fee, no trip fee and no out-of-area charge. If you decline the repair after the diagnostic, the $99 is the only number on the invoice, however long the gravel is.
The mechanism, the checks you can do without tools, the point to stop
Open the guide →
The mechanism, the checks you can do without tools, the point to stop
Open the guide →Phone or form, either way a dispatcher sends a two-hour window and a text the moment the truck rolls — from Harbor Country Drive, or off the bridge deck for Tacoma stops.
Clamp meter, thermometer, manometer where propane is involved. The failed component is identified and explained, and one figure goes on paper with the $99 built into it.
The truck carries what salt air, iron water and outages break: fill valves, defrost heaters, igniters, rollers, relays. Anything ordered comes back on our schedule, not your bill.
A complete run of the machine while you watch, the floor and panels put back as found, and the warranty term printed on the invoice.
$99 gets the meter on it, the figure goes on the ticket, the part is usually already on board, and the coverage term is printed on the invoice. Same card on both shores of the Narrows.
