Three towns across the White Mountains and the high desert below them.
The hub. Mixed housing, mixed appliances, more pellet stoves than anywhere else.
Cabins under closed canopy, heavy snow, owners three hours away.
High desert, old brick, and stoves doing the real heating. Route days.
We also reach Taylor, Lakeside, Hon-Dah, Linden, Clay Springs, Heber-Overgaard and Vernon. Further out than that, call and ask - we will tell you honestly whether it fits a route or whether someone closer serves you better.
Pinetop-Lakeside sits highest at around 7,200 feet, under a closed ponderosa canopy with the deepest snow on our patch. It is cabin country, much of it owned from Phoenix and used at weekends. Cold-start creosote, needle-packed flues and chimneys that stay damp for days because no sun reaches them.
Show Low is eight hundred feet lower and considerably more open. Mixed housing - full-time homes, cabins and newer subdivisions on the same street - and more pellet appliances than anywhere else we work. More exposure means more freeze-thaw cycles, which is why crowns here fail faster than the sheltered ones up the hill.
Snowflake is down at 5,600 feet where the pines give way to juniper and open country. An 1870s farming town: brick and stucco, original soft-fired masonry on the older houses, and stoves that are the primary heat rather than the ambience. Sun and daily temperature swing do more damage to mortar here than rain does.
Snowflake and Taylor run on scheduled route days rather than individual call-outs. That is what makes it possible to charge the same rate twenty-five miles out as we do in town.
Booking neighbours on the same day is how we keep travel out of the price.