St. Paul · Como to Summit Avenue
Washer stuck full of water in a Frogtown basement, oven that won’t light in a Como bungalow, refrigerator running warm on the North End? Our technicians come from Roseville to repair six kinds of machines in St. Paul homes.
$89 diagnostic, part of the approved repair
Same day visits, Monday to Saturday
Up to $15 off your first repair with us
12 Ramsey County cities
St. Paul
We cover the north and central parts of St. Paul, the neighborhoods that sit closest to our base in Roseville. That takes in Como and the streets around Como Lake, St. Anthony Park, Hamline-Midway, the North End, Payne-Phalen near Lake Phalen, Frogtown, Merriam Park, Macalester-Groveland, and Summit-University with Cathedral Hill. Most visits come down Snelling, Lexington or Rice, so a call from a house off Larpenteur or University Avenue is routine for us. However the request reaches us, by phone or through this site, a text comes back pinning down a two-hour arrival window. More often than not that window falls on the same day you reach us, whether the trouble sits in a washer, a dryer, a dishwasher or an oven, and a refrigerator that has quit cooling gets squeezed in first. Saturday appointments help people who can’t leave work on a weekday.
Much of the housing here went up between the 1880s and the 1920s: Victorians, foursquares, bungalows and a great many duplexes, a good share of them rented. Laundry nearly always lives in the basement at the bottom of a steep stair, often beside a floor drain, and the kitchens were drawn up in an era when nobody pictured a dishwasher under the counter. Old wiring and crowded circuits turn up behind dryers and ranges, and gas lines feed a lot of stoves and dryers in these blocks. The tap water is softened St. Paul water, so overdosed detergent shows up as suds and cloudy glasses far more often than scale. Winter brings frosted dryer vent hoods and garage refrigerators that quit in the cold. July thunderstorms blink the lights and can scramble an electronic control, and humid basements sour front-load door boots.
Around town
Bungalows and foursquares around Como Lake and Como Park keep their washers and dryers down a narrow basement stair. Calls here lean toward top-load washers that stop agitating, dryers that run cold, and older kitchen refrigerators, inherited from a previous owner, that hum loud and long through each July heat wave.
Hamline-Midway is a tight grid of modest houses and duplexes off Snelling Avenue, with plenty of rentals mixed in. We see dishwashers squeezed into short kitchen runs, ranges with tired bake elements, and washers that seep water onto basement floors after years of hard use by a string of tenants.
Along Rice Street and the side streets of the North End, many older frame houses park an old refrigerator, and sometimes a chest freezer, in the detached garage. January brings calls about those units going silent, and summer brings the opposite problem, along with dryers whose long vent runs have packed with lint.
Houses near Lake Phalen range from foursquares to compact bungalows, many with basement laundries close to a floor drain. Every summer we hear about front loaders whose rubber door boot has started to smell, and winter brings dryer vent hoods buried under drifts along the side yard until the dryer trips its high-limit thermostat.
Frogtown’s older houses and duplexes are full of rentals, so many of our visits start with a tenant at the door and a landlord on the phone. Typical calls are ranges with a dead bake element, refrigerators running warm in July, and washers that won’t drain past a clogged pump.
The large Victorians near Summit Avenue and Cathedral Hill hide some of the tightest kitchens in the city, many of them remodeled more than once. We handle dishwashers fitted between old cabinets, wall ovens set into narrow openings, and dryers vented through thick masonry at the back of the house.
Machines
Typical calls
Refrigerator · Hamline-Midway
A side-by-side in a rented Hamline-Midway duplex had a cold freezer and a fresh food side creeping toward room temperature. The technician pulled the rear freezer panel, found the coil wrapped in ice, and metered an open defrost heater. The landlord signed off on the written price with a text from work, and the heater came off the truck that afternoon.
Washer · Payne-Phalen
Down in a basement a few blocks from Lake Phalen, a top-loader banged so hard on spin that it crept across the concrete toward the floor drain. Wet bedding had bunched on one side, and the suspension rods were worn soft. The technician fitted new rods carried on the truck, and a towel load then spun out without the machine moving an inch.
Range · Macalester-Groveland
A bungalow off Grand Avenue had an electric oven that crawled toward temperature and baked cookies with pale bottoms. A blister had formed on the lower element, and with the meter clipped on, the coil showed no continuity. A replacement from the truck went in, the oven climbed back to its set point, and a probe thermometer confirmed the dial was telling the truth.
Water and winter
St. Paul tap water starts in the Mississippi, travels by conduit through a chain of lakes to Vadnais Lake, and is treated and softened at the McCarrons plant on Rice Street in Maplewood, which has softened the supply since 1941. The result is softened St. Paul water, gentle on heating elements and valves, so a second softener in the basement is often more than a house needs. The trouble we see runs the other way: full scoops of detergent leave suds in washers, a film on dishes and etching on glasses. Winter adds its own list, from garage freezers that thaw in subzero weather to brittle door gaskets and dryer hoods sealed shut by frost.
Questions
Our St. Paul work centers on the neighborhoods closest to Roseville, from Como and the North End across to Frogtown, Merriam Park and the blocks around Grand and Summit avenues. Live a little past those edges? Send the request with your cross streets anyway, and we will answer with a clear yes or no on reaching you.
A technician clips a meter onto the suspect parts, shows you which one gave out, and writes a single price for fixing it. Approve that number and the $89 sits within it instead of stacking on top. Decline, and you are square at $89. No wrench turns until you have read the figure and given the nod. First-time customers find that first St. Paul quote trimmed by up to $15 according to the job, while the diagnosis itself stays at $89.
Yes, and that is most of our laundry work in the city. We repair washers and dryers where they stand, so nothing has to come up the stairs. The technician brings a light, a meter and the common parts down in one trip. If a machine has to be pulled out from the wall, we protect the floor and put it back level.
Either of you can book the visit, but the person who owns the machine decides on the repair. Once the fault is found, the quote goes out as a text to whoever owns the building, and tools come out only after that person answers yes. Plenty of St. Paul duplex owners live in the other unit, so that answer can come quickly.
Usually a short one. Between eight in the morning and seven at night, Monday through Saturday, a technician can often reach a St. Paul house on the very day of your request, for a dryer or dishwasher just as for a refrigerator. A refrigerator or freezer that has warmed up still takes the first open slot, since food is at stake. Your text will name a two-hour arrival window, which spares you a morning parked by the front door.
In St. Paul, $89 pays for the metered testing and a price on paper. Pick the repair and you will find those dollars inside its total; walk away, and they close the account. If we have never been inside your home before, tick the new-customer box on the booking form: the first repair then sheds as much as $15; the exact figure rides on how big the repair is and appears on your quote. The $89 testing charge itself does not shrink.