About Cascade
Built around one measurable promise
Plenty of shops say fast and fair. We decided in 2009 that both words would be numbers instead: a 60-minute clock anyone can watch, and a price book anyone can read.
One van, a pager, and a rule
Ray Delgado spent his twenties running emergency calls for a shop that treated 2 a.m. as prime selling time — scared homeowners, vague hourly rates, and invoices that grew in the dark. He started Cascade in 2009 to run the same calls the opposite way: tell people what to shut off before you sell them anything, quote the whole job before the wrench comes out, and put the promise on a clock the customer can watch.
The 60-minute guarantee came first — scribbled on the whiteboard of a rented bay on Powell: "Measure the promise. Publish the number. Eat the fee when you miss." Seventeen years later the whiteboard is a dispatch board, the one van is 14, and the rule hasn't moved. Last quarter we hit the window on 97% of priority-one calls; the other 3% didn't pay a dispatch fee, and nobody had to argue about it.
The other thing that hasn't moved: nobody at Cascade earns commission on what they sell you. Techs are paid hourly plus premiums, which is why our reviews keep mentioning the repair we recommended instead of the replacement we could have sold.
The numbers we hold ourselves to
- priority-one arrival window, or the dispatch fee is $0
- 60 min
- priority-one arrival window, or the dispatch fee is $0
- of priority-one calls hit the window last quarter — misses paid nothing
- 97%
- of priority-one calls hit the window last quarter — misses paid nothing
- trucks staged in five spots across the metro overnight
- 14
- trucks staged in five spots across the metro overnight
- dispatch & diagnosis — credited in full toward any repair
- $79
- dispatch & diagnosis — credited in full toward any repair
Licensed, bonded & insured in Oregon and Washington. Every technician is background-checked, and the on-call rotation doubles ahead of forecast cold snaps and heat domes — because the promise has to survive the nights it matters most.
The people on the ticket
Who answers, who shows up
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Ray Delgado
Owner & master plumber · 24 years
Ray started Cascade in 2009 with one van and a pager, after a decade of watching emergency calls get treated as upsell opportunities. The 60-minute guarantee was his founding rule: measure the promise, publish the number, eat the fee when you miss.
- Oregon Journeyman → Master Plumber
- Backflow assembly tester
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Hannah Kowalski
Dispatch lead · 9 years
Hannah is the voice at 2 a.m. She walks callers to the right shutoff before a truck rolls, triages by risk instead of revenue, and gives ETAs from live truck positions — the same arithmetic behind the dispatch tool on this site.
- NFPA-trained emergency call handling
- Runs the 24/7 dispatch board
-
Miles Okafor
HVAC lead · 15 years
Miles runs the heating and cooling side, doubles the on-call rotation ahead of every forecast cold snap and heat dome, and personally reviews every replacement quote so the repair option is always shown beside it.
- EPA 608 Universal
- Factory-trained on heat pump systems
-
June Park
Journeyman plumber · 8 years
June handles the hardest leak-detection calls — the stains nobody can trace. Acoustic mic, thermal camera, one clean access cut. Customers keep asking for her by name, which is why two apprentices now shadow her full-time.
- Oregon & Washington journeyman licenses
- Trenchless repair certified
Sixteen more techs, dispatchers, and apprentices behind them — and two open seats right now.
The second promise: fixed on the first visit
An ETA guarantee is worthless if the truck arrives empty-handed. Every Cascade van restocks nightly against a 400-item minimum — water heaters included on the two night trucks — so about nine of ten emergency calls are finished on the first visit, not "we'll order the part."
Water doesn't wait. Neither do we.
Call and a human answers — day, night, holiday. Or build a dispatch request online and see your ETA and upfront price range before you commit to anything.
On site in 60 minutes on priority-one calls, or the dispatch fee is $0 — the fine print is one paragraph, and it's public.