The property is well served with utilities.
It has electricity and gas. Both are provided by Puget Sound Power. Service is reliable and rates are good. Power is underground, and there is a new “smart meter” that they fitted to the house in August 2019. I believe there are ways you can use monitoring software to interface with the smart meter so you can find out endless details about your energy use.
In addition, I had an electrician connect up a heavy duty transfer switch. The house has been divided into a number of different zones of service, and if there’s a power outage, you can connect up any generator at all via a standard cable to this transfer switch, and choose which of the circuits you want to swap over from mains power to the generator. Amp meters show the load that is being applied to the generator so you know how many circuits to swap over.
In the 32 years I’ve been here, there’s only ever been one time with more than a few hours of power outage, but on that one occasion, it was lovely to just fire up the generator, flick a few switches, and be back to normal living and normal electricity.
Regular cable service runs to the house, but I’ve not used it. The previous owner did, and there are some cable outlets in some of the rooms (master bedroom, living room, and downstairs den I believe).
I had high quality Cat-5e ethernet cable wired into the house when I bought it. It is capable of 1000 Mbps data. This is relevant, because the house is served by FIOS fiber, currently operated by Frontier Communications – they are in the process of selling it to some other company. The good news part of this is that for basic internet only, you can get a staggering symmetrical 500 Mbps speed for an equally staggering bargain price of $40/month. That’s what I’m using at present. Frontier also have phone and cable/tv packages that can be added to the internet service if you wish.
There’s weekly trash haulage – Monday night/Tuesday morning. They take regular trash, recycling, and yard waste.
The mail box is conveniently close, almost directly opposite on the other side of the road, and is a modern secure metal locking mail box. There’s a shared larger parcel box underneath too, and sometimes the postal delivery person will simply come and drop things at the door.