Chimney sweep near you
The Alberta Arts District and Concordia are on our Northeast route, and many calls come from renovated 1905 to 1928 houses where an insert or gas logs went into the old fireplace and the flue behind the remodel has never seen a camera.
Updated
Concordia's houses came in two bursts, 1905 to 1913 along the streetcar line that reached Alberta in 1903, and 1922 to 1928 when the bungalows filled the gaps, often with a single brick chimney on an outside wall.
The outside-wall chimney held a fireplace flue and a furnace flue for coal or oil, often without a liner, and its outside face has taken the weather head-on for a century while the inside face stayed warm, which is how the brick on one side ends up spalled while the other side looks fine. When the oil furnace gave way to gas, the furnace flue went cold.
What sets Alberta district calls apart is renovation. An insert dropped into the old firebox, a gas log set, a sealed-up hearth with a new mantel: each one hides the flue behind it, and whether that flue was ever relined is the first thing we check. Along NE Alberta St itself, the mixed-use buildings with apartments over the shops carry commercial flues or none.
On the Alberta and Concordia blocks the chimney is a modest brick stack on an outside wall, two flues wide, built between 1905 and 1928 and, on many of the houses, with no clay liner at all.
The renovations are where the trouble hides. A wood insert set into a 1910 firebox without its own liner sends exhaust into a flue far too big for it, where it cools, sticks to the brick as creosote and finds every open joint. Gas logs in the same firebox need a damper that stays open and a flue that carries the water vapor away.
Renovated fireplaces shape what Alberta and Concordia houses need, and these five jobs follow from what a remodel can leave hidden behind the old brick.
Wood inserts in the 1905 to 1928 fireboxes here get swept through their liner when they have one, and pulled out of the firebox when they do not, because an insert without a liner leaves creosote on bare brick where a brush through the stove cannot reach. The first visit tells you which kind you have; after that the yearly sweep is quick.
An insert found sitting in a 1910 firebox with no liner gets a stainless liner run from the stove collar to the top of the chimney, sized to the appliance and insulated, which is what turns the old oversized flue into one that drafts properly and keeps creosote from building where you cannot see it. Open fireplaces with no tile get the same treatment at a larger diameter.
A Level 2 camera inspection is how we find out what a remodel left behind in an Alberta house: whether the gas logs vent into a flue that was ever lined, whether the sealed hearth has an open flue above it collecting rain, and whether the furnace flue still serves anything. It is the right order at a sale, at a fuel change, and before relighting a fireplace that has sat cold.
Open fireplaces that still burn wood on the bungalow blocks get the yearly sweep and Level 1 look-over, firebox to cap, with the brick above the roof checked for the spalling that shows up on the weather side of an outside-wall stack, and a photo of the top so you know what the crown looks like without climbing.
A stack with no cap on a Concordia bungalow takes rain straight down both flues, and the furnace flue, with nothing warm in it, carries that water to the basement cleanout. A stainless cap with a spark screen over each flue, or one multi-flue cap over the stack, keeps the rain and the raccoons out; in late summer and September we look for swifts before capping an open flue, because a roost stays until the birds leave.
From I-5 we come east on N Killingsworth St or along NE Columbia Blvd, then drop down NE 15th Ave, NE 33rd Ave or NE 42nd Ave to the blocks on either side of Alberta.
Alberta itself is slow, with the storefronts, the Alberta Rose Theatre and the Last Thursday crowd once a month, so we park on the residential side streets rather than the strip. Kennedy School and Fernhill Park put us on the right end of Concordia, and if your chimney is on a mixed-use building over a shop, say so and we bring the longer ladder.
Streetcar service reached Alberta Street in 1903, and Concordia's houses followed in two bursts, 1905 to 1913 and 1922 to 1928.
The Alberta Arts District runs about a mile and a half along NE Alberta St from Martin Luther King Jr Blvd to NE 33rd Ave, and its Last Thursday art walk began in 1997.
The 1931 Northwestern Electric Company Alberta Substation is on the National Register of Historic Places.
Kennedy School, a former elementary school in Concordia, is now a hotel and restaurant, and Concordia University occupied its campus in the neighborhood from 1905 until it closed in 2020.
Shop owners on Alberta often lived in apartments above their storefronts, which is why the strip is mixed-use buildings rather than houses, with Fernhill Park as the neighborhood's big open space.
Yes, from Martin Luther King Jr Blvd out to NE 42nd and from Killingsworth down to the Alberta blocks, houses and the apartments over the shops alike. The work is booked at a posted price, the drive comes with it when the job goes ahead, and a photo of the fireplace or the top of the stack texted ahead usually lets us quote before we arrive.
Stop using it and we will usually get there the same week, sooner outside the October rush. An insert that smokes back is telling you the flue is restricted or the insert was never connected to a liner, and both are reasons not to light it again until someone has looked. Open a window, keep the carbon monoxide alarm on that floor working, and send a photo of the unit.
With a liner connected to the insert, we sweep through the liner from the top, clean the baffle and the stove, and vacuum the firebox behind it. That takes about the same time as an open fireplace. Without a liner, the insert comes out of the firebox so the old flue and the smoke shelf can be cleaned properly, and we talk about a liner before it goes back. Photos come either way.
It can be, so have the flue looked at before another season. Vented gas logs make a lot of water vapor and some acid, and in an unlined brick flue that moisture soaks the joints from inside; the damper also has to stay open while they run. A Level 2 camera inspection shows what the gas has been doing to the brick, and a liner sized for gas is the usual fix if it is eating the mortar.
Yes, a red day covers a wood insert, because an insert is a wood stove set into a fireplace. On red, the county rule stops inserts, open fireplaces, pellet stoves and fire pits for the full noon-to-noon period, except in a household the county has approved for an exemption. Yellow means consider limiting burning. The county calls these days whenever poor air is forecast, winter or wildfire season; our wood burning rules guide shows how to check the color.
If it is uncertified, yes: Oregon's home-sale law requires an uncertified unit to be taken out and destroyed. The seller is responsible unless the buyer takes it on in writing and then has 30 days after closing. Look for the DEQ or EPA label on the back; a UL safety sticker is not the same thing. A Level 2 inspection, camera up the flue behind it, is also recommended at a sale, though not required.
Read our contractor-check guide first; it walks through the state's lookup for any Oregon contractor and what a clean result looks like. Then ask the company two things: whether the price is posted before anyone comes out, and whether you get the camera images from inside the flue behind your insert or gas logs. A remodel that hid the flue is exactly the job where you want to see the pictures.
Killingsworth and 33rd run the same truck from Alberta to Woodlawn and Piedmont on one side and the Alameda ridge and Cully on the other.
Call with what the fireplace is doing, or text a photo of the opening and one of the chimney top, and we will name the service and its posted price before we come out.