Range repair in Everett, the most electric kitchen town we serve

Everett is really two housing towns. North of downtown, Riverside, Northwest and Rucker Hill grew as mill-town neighborhoods in the early 1900s, and about 16% of the city's homes, some 7,437 of them, were built before 1940. South Everett is newer: annexed in pieces from 1959 to 1972, it filled with Boeing-era subdivisions, apartments and condos around Everett Mall, which opened in 1974, and along Evergreen Way and Silver Lake. Baker Heights, built as wartime housing in 1943, falls between those eras, and about 31% of Everett homes date from 1980 to 1999.

What ties them together is electricity. With 68% of homes heated electrically and only 28% on gas, Everett leans electric more than any city we serve, and its kitchens follow. Most ranges we repair here are coil-top or smoothtop electrics, with a growing number of induction models in remodels and new buildings. That makes our Everett van heavy on elements, receptacles, infinite switches, sensors and relays, while still carrying igniters for the gas ranges in the city's gas-heated homes. Electric ranges are among the most repairable appliances in a house, which is good news for a city that relies on them this much.

In Riverside, Bayside, Delta and the Northwest neighborhood, range circuits were often added or upgraded long after the house was built. When a newer electric range moves into a century-old kitchen, the cord has to match the receptacle, and a receptacle showing scorch marks, loose contacts or discoloration has to be fixed before anything is plugged in. We check the terminal block and the cord on every electric range we pull out, and tell you if the wall side needs an electrician. Some of these kitchens also have a wall oven added in a later remodel on its own circuit, and we test it as a separate appliance.

South Everett is rental country. Only about 44% of Everett homes are detached houses; 28% sit in small multi-unit buildings and 19% in large complexes of twenty units or more. Add households connected to Naval Station Everett and the Boeing plant, and plenty of ranges here serve one tenant after another. Mobile and manufactured homes, about 3% of Everett housing, add compact ranges to the mix. Tenants are welcome to arrange the visit; we phone the owner or manager with the price, and they have the final word before any part goes in. If the dishwasher next to the range is also misbehaving, we check it the same trip and take $10 off that second diagnostic.

Snohomish County PUD supplies the city's electricity, and PSE serves the gas-heated homes. If a gas range ever leaves a gas smell in the room, go outside before anything else, then dial 911 or PSE on 1-888-225-5773. Everett runs its own water system from Spada Lake, filtered at Chaplain Reservoir, and at about 12.5 ppm of hardness it is soft enough that steam-clean ovens stay mostly clear of scale. Our route north is I-5 the whole way: Everett Mall and Silver Lake come first, downtown and the north-end streets around Legion Park a little later.