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Appliance Installation and Repairin Greenwood and Central Indiana

We hook up dishwashers, disposals, microwaves, washers and dryers, haul the old unit away, and say plainly when a job belongs to a licensed appliance tech instead of a handyman.

What we actually install

Most appliance jobs are not really about the appliance. Buying the dishwasher takes twenty minutes online. Getting it out of the box, into a 24-inch opening somebody tiled around in 2003, connected to a shutoff valve that has not been turned in nine years, and drained with a proper high loop is the part people call us for.

Here is the work we take on:

We do not sell appliances, and we do not want to. Buy the unit wherever you get the best price and the best delivery date. What matters is that somebody handles the hookup, and big-box delivery contracts routinely exclude anything past a straight swap. If the shutoff is seized, the cord is the wrong style, the opening is a quarter inch too tight, or the old unit has to leave the house, the crew sets the box in your kitchen and drives away. That is usually the call we get.

• Dishwashers - swap-outs, and first-time installs where the supply, drain and circuit already exist
• Garbage disposals - full unit replacement including sink flange, mounting ring, drain and switch leg
• Over-the-range microwaves - mounting plate, ducted or recirculating blower setup, filter, outlet
• Range hoods - mount and connect to existing ductwork, seal and support the run
• Washers and dryers - leveling, new fill hoses, cord swaps, stacking kits, pedestals, full vent runs
• Electric ranges, cooktops and wall ovens - set, level, anti-tip bracket, connect to an existing receptacle
• Refrigerators - placement, leveling, door swing reversal, new water line to the ice maker
• Disconnect, removal and haul-away of the old unit

Where our work stops and a specialist starts

There is a hard line between installing an appliance and repairing one, and we would rather tell you where it is before you book than after we are standing in your kitchen. We install, connect, vent and swap. We do not open sealed refrigeration systems, we do not diagnose compressors or control boards on major appliances, and we do not touch gas.

Two of those are not preference, they are law. Section 608 of the federal Clean Air Act requires certification for anyone whose work could break into a refrigerant circuit, and household refrigerators and freezers fall under Type I small-appliance certification. Separately, Indiana requires a licensed plumbing contractor or gas fitter for gas supply piping inside a building, including connecting and pressure testing a gas appliance, and gas line work in Indianapolis requires a permit. Anybody who offers to do either of those as a handyman is telling you something about how they run their business.

The third is judgment. When a four-year-old dishwasher will not drain, that is usually a clogged inlet or a disposal knockout plug nobody removed, and we can fix it in an hour. When a four-year-old dishwasher throws an error code and the pump is dead, you want the manufacturer-authorized servicer, because there may be warranty coverage we would void by opening the machine.

Dishwashers, disposals and everything under the sink

Under-sink work is where most appliance installs go sideways, and almost always for the same three reasons. The angle stop feeding the dishwasher has not been closed since the house was built and will not seat again once you crack it, so it gets replaced. The old braided supply line is due anyway and costs a few dollars. And on a new disposal, the dishwasher drain knockout plug is still sitting inside the inlet from the factory - leave it there and the dishwasher will not drain, which is the single most common callback in the trade.

We install disposals as complete units rather than trying to nurse a failing one. Once the motor bearings go or the grind chamber rusts through at the bottom seam, there is no repair worth paying for. The swap includes a new sink flange, fresh plumber's putty or the gasket the manufacturer specifies, the mounting ring, the discharge tube and the drain reroute, plus the cord and switch leg if the old one was hardwired.

September and October are the busiest weeks of the year for this. People book kitchen appliance swaps ahead of holiday cooking, and a dishwasher that limped along all summer becomes urgent the week before Thanksgiving. If a unit is on order, call us with the delivery date and we will schedule the hookup around it instead of leaving a box in your kitchen for two weeks.

Washers, dryers and the vent run nobody looks at

The dryer itself takes about thirty minutes. The vent is the real job, and it is the one part of a laundry install with genuine safety consequences. In its Home Dryer Fires report, published June 2020, the National Fire Protection Association found that from 2014 through 2018 local fire departments responded to an estimated average of 13,820 home structure fires per year in which a dryer was involved in the ignition, causing an average of seven civilian deaths, 344 civilian injuries and $233 million in direct property damage annually. NFPA attributed 32 percent of those dryer fires to failure to clean, and found that 27 percent started when dust, fiber or lint ignited. That is an installation and maintenance problem, not bad luck, and it is the reason we pay more attention to the duct than to the machine.

Code gives you a clear target. Under the International Residential Code, a dryer exhaust duct is limited to 35 feet of developed length from the transition duct connection to the exterior terminal, and you deduct 5 feet for each 90-degree elbow and 2.5 feet for each 45. The flexible transition duct behind the machine does not count toward that total. If the run exceeds the limit, it has to be labeled. Rigid metal duct, foil tape rather than screws inside the airflow, and a real exterior hood with a working damper are the difference between a dryer that finishes a load in 45 minutes and one that takes two hours and cooks lint at the same time.

This matters more than average in Central Indiana because so many Greenwood, Center Grove and south-side floor plans put the laundry on an interior wall or in a finished basement. That means a long horizontal run through joists to reach an exterior wall, often with three or four turns already eating 15 to 20 feet of your allowance. We measure the developed length before we quote, and if the existing run is over the limit or crushed behind the machine, we say so and price the correction rather than hanging a new dryer on a bad vent.

• Stacking kits and pedestals, including the bracket work to make a stack safe on an uneven floor
• 3-prong to 4-prong dryer cord conversions when the new machine does not match the old receptacle
• New braided fill hoses on every washer install - the rubber ones fail and flood laundry rooms
• Rigid metal vent replacement, sidewall terminations and damper hoods
• Clearing lint out of the existing run while the machine is pulled out for the install - part of doing the install right, not a standalone vent cleaning service, which we do not sell

Over-the-range microwaves and range hoods

An over-the-range microwave is a two-person lift into a cabinet with no margin for error. The unit weighs 60 to 80 pounds, the mounting plate has to land on studs, and the power cord and any duct have to come through holes cut in the cabinet bottom that line up on the first try because you only get one attempt at a cabinet floor.

The part homeowners most often miss is the blower. Most over-the-range units ship configured to recirculate, and if you have real ductwork going outside, the blower has to be physically removed and rotated before the microwave goes up. Do it after the unit is hung and you take it back down. If you are recirculating instead, the machine needs a charcoal filter in the vent housing, and those are model specific - the part number is in the installation manual, not on a shelf label. Manufacturers generally want that filter changed at least once a year, and some call for every six to nine months depending on how much you cook.

We mount hoods and microwaves and connect them to existing ductwork, and we can run and terminate a vent through a sidewall. We do not cut roof penetrations, and we do not design make-up air for high-CFM commercial-style hoods. Those go to a mechanical contractor.

Refrigerator water lines and cold-weather laundry rooms

Ice maker lines are a small job with a long tail of leaks. We run a new 1/4-inch line off a proper tee and a quarter-turn stop valve, not a self-piercing saddle valve. Saddle valves clog with mineral scale, weep behind a cabinet for months, and are the reason a lot of kitchen floors get replaced. We use braided or PEX supply rather than soft copper coiled behind the fridge where it will get kinked the first time the unit gets pulled out for cleaning.

Two Indiana-specific problems show up every year from November through February. First, garage refrigerators. Manufacturers typically rate a standard refrigerator to run in an ambient room temperature somewhere in the range of about 55 to 110 degrees, because the thermostat sits in the fresh-food compartment. When a Greenwood garage sits at 25 degrees in January, that thermostat stops calling for cooling and the freezer thaws. Garage-ready models exist and handle it. A standard one moved out there in the fall will not.

Second, water lines routed through an exterior wall or an unheated crawl space to reach a fridge or a laundry room on an outside wall. Those freeze, split, and then flood on the thaw. If you are having an ice maker line run this fall, it is worth ten extra minutes of routing to keep it inside conditioned space. We will point out the risk before we run it, not after.

Commercial and multi-site appliance work

A large share of our appliance work is commercial, dispatched as work orders from national facility maintenance partners. We have handled site work for All American Facilities Management, IFS, Total Wine, Valvoline, Papa Murphy's, Caliber Collision, Crown Staffing, JFB Construction and U.S. Navy recruiting offices, and we have serviced locations for Best Buy, Walgreens, Aspen Dental, O'Reilly, Hollister and PacSun. Individual tickets have run from $150 to $23,000.

For FM buyers, the operational details matter more than the sales pitch. We keep a current COI and W-9 on file, work Net-30 and Net-45, do IVR check-in and check-out where the program requires it, photograph before and after on every visit, and will bill a multi-site rollout on a single invoice rather than making your AP team reconcile eleven of them. Our trip minimum is $150.

On the commercial side the same scope line applies. Break room refrigerators, microwaves, dishwashers and disposals we install and swap. Commercial ice machines, walk-in coolers and any sealed refrigeration system go to a certified refrigeration contractor, and we will say that in the first status update rather than sitting on a ticket for a week.

What it costs and how a visit works

We carry a $150 trip minimum, which covers the visit and the first stretch of work. For reference, national cost data for 2026 puts labor-only dishwasher replacement in the range of roughly $200 to $500, and most straight swaps we do with sound shutoffs and a matching cord land in the lower half of that plus parts. A dryer install with a new rigid vent run, or a microwave that needs the blower reconfigured and a new duct through a sidewall, runs higher. We are not going to promise you a number from a web page - the site visit sets the real one, in writing, before the work starts.

What reliably adds cost: a seized or leaking shutoff valve that has to be replaced, a cord or receptacle mismatch, cabinet or countertop trimming to fit a unit that is a hair wider than the last one, converting a drain that was never plumbed for a disposal, a dryer vent over the code length, and haul-away of the old machine. We would rather find those on the walkthrough than surprise you with them halfway through.

We are Mon-Sat 8:00 to 6:00, and we do not run after-hours emergency service - if you need somebody at 11pm, we are not the right call and we will say so. Nick's Handyman Service has been working Central Indiana since 2005, incorporated as an LLC in 2018, licensed and insured, BBB A+ accredited since November 2025, 4.9 stars across 73 Google reviews. To get on the schedule for an appliance install, call 317-893-3717 or email nicholas@nhsindy.com with the model number and your delivery date.

Common Questions