MitchMan - 11-17-2022 at 12:04 AM
I have been a resident and homeowner in La Paz for over 15 years. Had plenty of maintenance catastrophes and near catastrophes. Wouldn’t have made
it thru without my “Go To” guy. His name is Jose Luis.
When I first bought the house, it didn’t have air conditioning or heating, had inadequate wiring and too few electrical outlets, and no power to the
very large yard. Ill fitting windows, no door locks, an insecure front door made of wood, a sink hole in the back yard, no security lights, a block
wall that wasn’t high enough for security, see-through wrought iron gates all across the front yard facing the street, a sagging concrete car port,
all the windows had bars that protruded too far away from the wall for security, a water heater that barely worked, indoor faucets that leaked, and
low water pressure. I needed a lot of help.
My La Paz attorney recommended Jose Luis. Best recommendation I have ever gotten in La Paz. Officially, he is an air conditioning man, but Jose Luis
actually does it all; plumbing, electrical, masonry, mechanical, fixtures, repairs, installations, etc. He is smart, honest, reliable, and has plenty
of common sense and plenty of experience. If he can’t fix something, he always knows someone who can-quickly and at reasonable cost. If I have a
problem at the house, I always start with a call to Jose Luis. He has never, ever failed to help me. Not once.
He is also an excellent communicator. It can be said that he doesn’t speak English, technically, but for some reason he seems to understand enough
English to always understand me completely and accurately. Because of his intelligence, he immediately picks up on context. My Spanish is atrocious; I
can’t conjugate verbs at all, but Jose Luis has always been able to keep it simple when he explains stuff to me as he makes sure I walk away with a
complete understanding of the matter at hand. There has never been miscommunication between us. Over the years, his understanding of English has
improved much better than my understanding of Spanish.
Jose Luis installed and, to this day, maintains my three mini-splits. He has installed a gas water heater, and when that wore out, he installed an
electric one. He installed a cistern for me. He fixed all the window gaps, had an iron door fabricated for me and installed it (with several locks) in
front of the wooden front door, he upgraded all my doors with heavy duty secure hinges, he installed and wired all four of my outdoor security lights,
he wired my large yard with six different strategically placed electrical outlets, he added an electrical socket in my bathroom and one at my kitchen
counter.
My house was broken into twice. I asked Jose Luis if he could find someone to heighten my concrete wall by 1 meter (all around my 9,300 square foot
lot), put metal pineapple spikes and circular barbed wire along the top of the wall, and replace the see-through wrought iron double wide carport gate
and door at the front of the property with a metal carport gate and door, so he had his uncle do the metal and masonry work and Jose Luis installed
the barbed wire straight away.
The backyard sinkhole; Jose Luis dug a big hole to find out what was causing the sinkhole. He then fixed it.
My concrete carport was sagging and holding water and deteriorating the ceiling. Jose Luis brought over a guy with the right experience and equipment
and leveled the roof surface, installed a column/pillar, and patched up the under ceiling to look like new.
Well, that’s the normal stuff, then there was an emergency in one windy November when my 50-60 ft high dead guamuchi tree was just about to topple
over. I called the fire department and they said they couldn’t help me. I panicked; it was certain to fall onto my neighbor’s wall and yard. I
called Jose Luis and he came over right away with a crew that tied all kinds of lines to hold the tree up and then the next day he brought over a
couple of guys to whittle the darn thing down to 10 ft high. Jose Luis over saw and worked on it to completion.
Six months ago, on a Friday, my 1998 Tacoma was having fuel injector problems three days before I had to leave for the states. Called Jose Luis and he
had a long-time mechanic friend come over the next day to my house to check out the truck. Long story short, his friend fixed the fuel injector
problem, changed spark plugs, did a general tune up and tightened up some belts. $300 USD and the truck was ready in 24 hours delivered to my house.
The Toyota dealership wouldn’t have been able to get to it for a week.
There’s been some other stuff Jose Luis fixed for me, such as paint my house inside and out, put weather resistant topping on the roof, he took care
of a really bad black mold situation inside the house after the pandemic (I hadn’t been to the property for well over a year), cut the 5 foot tall
weeds that came up all over the property after a rain, and various plumbing emergencies, but this post is long enough, so I will stop it here (but
there’s actually more stuff to tell).
I wrote this post to let my fellow Pasenos know about Jose Luis. Oh yeah, he also turned me on to Pacifico. His phone number is 612-104-9183.