Every home service in Alicante

Alicante is not one city, it is five different housing stocks

Three hundred and fifty thousand residents spread across districts that have nothing in common. The Ensanche Diputación and much of the centre still hold buildings from the early nineteen hundreds, with high ceilings, light wells and water risers that have been patched for eighty years. Carolinas, Benalúa and San Blas are mostly sixties and seventies blocks, soundly built but with wiring sized for an era without air conditioning or induction hobs. Then there is the strip along Playa de San Juan and the Albufereta, towers from the sixties to the eighties with seasonal occupancy and an exposure to sea air that gets paid for in outdoor units and metal window frames.

For a plumber or an electrician that means the same fault is not solved the same way in Vistahermosa as in the old town. In an Ensanche building a leak is rarely where the stain appears: it travels through the slab and comes out two floors down. In a San Juan tower the problem is usually in the communal riser rather than the flat, and the administrator has to be spoken to before anything is opened up.

Access is a real cost, and almost nobody puts it in the quote

Working in central Alicante means parking a long way off, carrying materials up narrow stairs and, if there is rubble, applying to occupy the street for a skip. Those are hours somebody pays for. We would rather say so at the survey and put it in the quote than discover it on day one and turn it into an extra.

In buildings with a small lift there are materials that simply will not go up: a bath, a one-piece worktop, certain kitchen units. It can be solved, but it changes the method and the price. We check before ordering anything.

Air conditioning, the July breakdown

Alicante packs half its air conditioning calls into June, July and August, and most are units that have gone three or four summers without a service. In the beachfront towers salt is added to the equation, corroding the outdoor coil and taking performance away year after year. A unit cleaned every spring lasts close to twice as long.

Front-line communities usually have rules about where the outdoor unit can sit and what grille is allowed on the facade. Worth checking before buying the equipment rather than after.

Vetted professionals, and one person on the phone

Everyone in the network is checked for paperwork, public liability insurance and reviews from previous customers before joining. Anyone who drops below 4.2 stars over more than ten jobs leaves.

When a job needs several trades, we sequence them. You have one contact, not four numbers that refer you to each other.