Keeping it small

MOSES LAKE — Sometimes, when you need a plumber, you really need a plumber. When that happens, you want one who’s reliable and who won’t break the bank. Steve West considers himself one of those.

“I do what I say,” West said. “I'm super honest. So if I tell you (I’ll be there at) 8, I’m usually a little before. I don't change prices. They go up if I have to, according to my costs, but there's a lot of people who take advantage of not enough workers. I do not do that. My price doesn't change no matter who you are. You're important to me as the next guy, the next guy and the next guy.”

West and his wife Lisa West own Top Plumbing, which had its official ribbon-cutting Oct. 24. The Wests moved to Moses Lake last year from Whidbey Island, drawn by the small-town atmosphere and the sunshine.

“What really brought us here was the lack of rain, and the lack of ferries,” West said. “I'd been there for 54 years, (Lisa) had been there for five years. My daughter graduated, and we decided that we didn't want to deal with the ferry and the rain. And so we looked on the east side, where we always wanted to move. She wanted to move closer to her parents (in Wenatchee), but it just didn't work out … So I told her that I had played a lot of softball in my youth here in Moses Lake, and she looked and found a few houses and the last one we picked. 

“We moved all our stuff in January,” he added. “It was five degrees.”

Top Plumbing does only service calls, West said; no new construction or remodels. He’s owned Top Plumbing for about 14 years, he said, but he’s been in plumbing virtually all his life. 

“My dad owned a company on Whidbey Island,” he said. “So at about 9 years old, I was starting to solder and do plumbing. I took 10 years off to build houses. So I probably have been plumbing (for) at least 30 years.”

His son is a third-generation plumber, West said, doing the new construction work that West prefers to leave alone.

“My son came to work with me for a long time. And then he started my dad's old company back up over there and took all my contractors. I sold him my rough-in truck so he was set up, ready to go, and then I just bought my finish truck and service truck over.”

West is licensed, bonded and insured for residential work, but not commercial. Service calls are enough to keep him busy, he said.

“You know, switching out hot water tanks, fixing outside faucets that are dripping, fixing toilets, replacing faucets, that kind of thing. The small stuff.”

One of West’s customer bases is people who tackle their own repairs, and then call a plumber when they’re past the point of no return.

“You get a lot of people who think they can do it themselves, especially with the Internet,” he said. “I had one person who said ‘Oh, I need a whole new outdoor faucet.’ And when I got there I just replaced the innards. (He said,) ‘I didn't know you could do that. I wasn't sure how to do that.’”

Lisa West works from home in marketing for insurance, she said, and is also a project manager for a software system used in that industry. She also handles Top Plumbing’s taxes, and sometimes goes out on calls if the time is right.

“I don’t have an apprentice,” Steve West said. “You get me, you talk to me, I show up.”

“And if you’re lucky, I come too,” Lisa said.

“If you’re lucky, the pretty one shows up as well,” Steve agreed.

The West aren’t strangers to small-town life. Steve West grew up in Freeland, which is at the south end of Whidbey Island, where there were no stop signs and the roads were gravel, he said.

“We had one fast food restaurant and we had a couple of little grocery stores,” Lisa West said. “But if you actually wanted to go grocery shopping, it was at least 45 minutes or a ferry ride.”

“ Where I grew up was friendly at one point, but it's changed,” Steve West said. “The dollar has moved in and now people's attitudes have changed … Whidbey Island’s turning into Mercer Island, and we didn't want it. I liked the small town.”

The Wests have taken to the Basin with relish, they said. Steve West coaches basketball at Warden Middle School, and they’ve enjoyed the fishing and hiking our area boasts.

“People are very friendly here,” Lisa West said. “I do notice that a lot.”

“We love the atmosphere,” Steve West said. “So far everybody's been great to us.”

Joel Martin may be reached via email at jmartin@columbiabasinherald.com.