Formerly Adam & Sam Brothers RepairMountlake Terrace · Ductless heat pumps
Our shop is on St Albion Way, so a Mountlake Terrace mini-split call is a short drive across town. We install ductless heat pumps in baseboard-heated houses and condos, and we repair and deep-clean the ones already on your walls.
Mountlake Terrace began in 1949 on a former wartime landing field, and many of its first houses were small cinderblock homes built for returning veterans. Roughly 44% of the housing here went up between 1950 and 1969, and close to two homes in three heat with electricity. In practice that usually means baseboard heaters under the windows, a wall heater in the hallway and no ductwork anywhere. A ductless mini-split suits that kind of house because nothing has to be torn open: one outdoor heat pump, a slim refrigerant line through the wall, and an indoor head that heats in January and cools in July.
We handle both ends of a mini-split's life. For a new system, Adam or Sam walks the house, measures the rooms, looks at the electrical panel and writes the quote on the spot or the same day. For an existing one, we chase down error codes, water dripping from a head, weak heat and the sour smell that builds up inside a blower wheel. On install day we pressure-test the line set with nitrogen, pull a deep vacuum and watch that it holds before the refrigerant is released, because moisture left in the copper quietly shortens a compressor's life. With the shop a few blocks from Town Center, a same-day visit Monday through Saturday is rarely a problem when you call in the morning.
The block walls in the oldest Terrace houses change how a line set goes in. We core-drill a clean three-inch hole through the masonry instead of hammering it, seal it from both sides, and plan the head on an exterior wall so the line stays short and tidy. In Melody Hill and Cascade View, where many ramblers have one main living space, a single well-placed head can carry a good part of the house while the baseboards stay in the far bedrooms for the coldest nights. Many of these houses also kept their original, smaller electrical panels, so we check the capacity and the open breaker spaces before promising a second or third head.
About a quarter of local homes are in buildings of two to nineteen units, and Town Center keeps adding mid-rise apartments and condos. Condo boards often set rules on where an outdoor unit can sit, whether it may hang on a deck rail, and what color the line-set cover must be. Hand us the board's equipment policy and we draw the plan around it before a single hole is drilled.
Mountlake Terrace sits inside the Puget Sound Convergence Zone, so a narrow snow band can drop more here than in downtown Seattle. We set outdoor units on stands or wall brackets tall enough to clear drifts and the meltwater that drips off during defrost. Power cuts matter too: the November 2024 bomb cyclone left more than 70,000 PUD customers in the dark, and a head that comes back blinking after an outage sometimes needs nothing more than a breaker cycle, while one that keeps blinking may have a board that took the hit. Snohomish County PUD supplies the power here; before you sign, we check which of its heat pump programs, if any, fit your house.
One outdoor unit with one wall head starts at $4,000, a figure that already counts the equipment and our installation work, and the written quote spells out the head size, the line-set route and any electrical work your panel needs. Every extra zone begins at $2,250. Bigger layouts that hang several heads off a single outdoor unit get their own quote on request once we have walked the house, and neither that visit nor the written quote costs you anything. For units already running, mini-split repair and cleaning start at $285, covering deep cleanings as well as leak repairs, fan motors and control boards. Treat these as starting prices for our area rather than a quote for your home. A repair price appears in writing once the diagnostic pins down the fault, while an install figure comes once we have measured.
Starting prices for the north Seattle area, 2026. The $85 diagnostic is included in any repair you approve, and the exact price is in the written estimate before work starts.
Install prices start here, equipment and installation included, before any utility program. Multi-zone systems are priced after a visit. We do not charge for the site visit or the written quote.
If your mini-split is under about ten years old and the fault is a fan motor, a sensor or a plugged drain, repair nearly always wins. A dead inverter board on an older head is a closer call: boards are specific to the model, and on a system past its middle years that repair can reach a real share of a new single zone. A failed compressor, or a leak inside the outdoor coil of an aging unit, usually tips us toward replacement, especially when the old system heats only one room and the house still leans on baseboards everywhere else. In a small Terrace rambler, a newer and better-sized head can cover more of the floor plan than the original did. Because the shop is around the corner, we can lay out both numbers on one written estimate and let you think it over without a second trip.
Sometimes most of it. A head in the main room of an open 1950s rambler can carry the kitchen and hallway, but bedrooms with closed doors stay cooler. Many owners keep the baseboards in those rooms for the coldest nights. On the walk-through we measure each room and tell you whether one head, two heads or a multi-zone system makes sense, and we put that recommendation in writing.
Yes. We can give the board a written plan showing where the outdoor unit goes, how it is mounted, the line-set route, the cover color and the electrical work. Boards usually want those details before they vote. Have the bylaws or equipment policy on hand at the visit and we design around the rules instead of asking for exceptions later.
We cover the wall and floor, wrap the head in a drain bag, take off the panel and filters, and wash the coil and the blower wheel with cleaner and a low-pressure rinse. Then we flush the drain pan and line, check the outdoor coil, and run the system to confirm normal temperatures. A head that smelled sour usually smells like nothing afterward.
Check the breaker for the outdoor unit, put fresh batteries in the remote, confirm the mode is set to heat or cool rather than dry or fan, and rinse the washable filters. If the code comes back, write it down or count the blinking lights and read it to us when you call. That code often tells us which part to bring.
Yes. We repair and clean ductless systems from all the major equipment brands, whoever put them in. A different installer is not a problem; a missing model number sometimes is, so reading us the label on the side of the outdoor unit when you call helps us arrive with the right parts on the van.
Talk to Adam & Sam
Call (425) 570-9520 with the head's error code, or book online and keep up to $18 off the repair. The $85 diagnostic is folded into the repair price once you approve the work, and a walk-through for a new system costs nothing.
Mini-split
No ducts, room-by-room control, heating and cooling from one wall unit: why mini-splits suit North Seattle metro homes and what a clean install looks like.
Schedule a repair
Send the basics and we call you back with an arrival window, most days the same morning.