Chimney sweep near you
We sweep and repair chimneys on every Aloha street, where the calls are cracked crowns and orphaned furnace flues on the 1960s and 1970s brick ranches and leaking chase covers on the 1980s and 1990s metal fireplaces.
Updated
Aloha's single-family houses were mostly built between the 1960s and the 1990s, a lot of them three-bedroom, which puts the fireplaces squarely in the decades when builders moved from brick to metal.
The 1960s and 1970s ranches commonly came with a brick fireplace and a chimney that often vented the furnace too, and the 1980s and 1990s subdivisions commonly came with a factory-built metal firebox inside a sided chase. Both are now at the point where the first real repairs come due.
On the brick that means a crown cracked across, mortar joints opened on the weather side and a furnace flue left cold and wet after a high-efficiency furnace took its own vent out the wall; on the metal it means a rusted chase cover and chase flashing pulled away from the siding. An older farmhouse on a Beaverton-Reedville Acreage parcel may carry older brick still.
Aloha's masonry is 1960s and 1970s brick from the clay tile liner era, often two flues in one stack, and its metal fireplaces are 1980s and 1990s factory-built units in framed chases, so the inspection list depends on which decade built the house.
On the brick we look for the cracked crown, open joints, a rusted throat damper and flue tile flaking where the furnace once kept it warm. On the chases we check the cover, the storm collar, the flashing against the siding, the refractory panels and the clearance between the pipe and the framing, because the pipe is all that stands between the fire and the studs.
The Aloha calls below are the ones a 1960s to 1990s tract produces once the houses pass forty.
The concrete crown on a 1970 Aloha ranch chimney was often poured flush with the brick, with no overhang and no drip edge, and fifty-plus winters of rain and freeze have split it across the middle so water now runs straight into the top course of brick. We cut it back, form a new crown that overhangs the brick with a drip kerf underneath, and seal around the tile where it passes through.
Where a brick fireplace in the older Aloha tracts still burns wood every winter, the annual sweep runs brushes sized to the tile down the fireplace flue, clears the smoke shelf, checks the damper and shines a light down the second flue in the same stack. You get the before and after pictures from inside the flue.
When a furnace installer tells an Aloha homeowner that the old chimney is no longer needed, the next call is a Level 2 camera inspection, because the flue that used to carry furnace exhaust now serves only a water heater, if anything, and can condense and shed tile. The camera decides whether that flue is relined for the water heater or capped and sealed.
The sided chases on the 1980s and 1990s houses tend to leak at the top, where a flat chase cover rusts through, and at the base, where step flashing against the siding that was never counterflashed pulls loose. We set a new sloped cover, seal the collar around the pipe and reflash the chase base where it meets the roof.
A three-bedroom Aloha house with the original forced-air ducts under the floor can hold decades of dust in the trunk and the returns, and the usual trigger for a call is a remodel, a move-in or a register that puffs gray when the furnace kicks on. We put the system under negative pressure, clean every supply and return run, and photograph the trunk before and after.
Tualatin Valley Highway and Farmington Road run through Aloha from Beaverton westward, and 185th Avenue and 170th Avenue cross them, so almost every address is a few turns off one of the four.
From US 26 we come down 185th Avenue, and from OR 217 we take Tualatin Valley Highway; Baseline Road and Kinnaman Road cover the rest. Many streets are flat with wide driveways, which makes for an easy setup, but say whether the chimney faces the street or the backyard.
Locals say uh-LOH-uh, not the Hawaiian way, and the Aloha post office opened on January 9, 1912. The Wheeler Subdivision was platted in 1893, trains stopped here from 1907, and Southern Pacific Red Electric trains served the town from 1908 to 1929.
Aloha High School opened in 1970, the Aloha Swim Center followed in 1977, and Intel opened its Aloha plant in 1976.
A 1984 attempt to incorporate Aloha as a city was halted by the regional boundary commission, and Aloha remains unincorporated county. Much of it still follows the layout of the Beaverton-Reedville Acreage, a large suburban development by the Shaw-Fear Company.
The Aloha Community Library opened in 2012 in a strip mall at Farmington and Kinnaman Roads, and the parks belong to the Tualatin Hills Park and Recreation District.
Yes, all four ZIPs that cover Aloha, 97003, 97006, 97007 and 97078, are inside our area, whether the mailing address says Aloha or Beaverton. Each job carries the price from our price board, and the drive costs nothing extra once we do the work. The unincorporated status matters for the county's wood burning rule, not for what we charge.
No, unless your household is exempt. Aloha is unincorporated Washington County, so on any red day the county calls between the first of November and the first of March, fireplaces and wood stoves stay cold, with exemptions such as wood-only heat and lower household income. Pellet stoves are not covered by the county rule. The county announces each day's status, and the details are in our wood burning rules guide.
Before the next wet season, not today. A cracked crown lets rain into the top courses of brick, and each freeze widens the crack and loosens the brick, so waiting can turn a new crown into a rebuild of the top of the stack. A crown crack is a water problem rather than a fire problem, but we confirm that from above before saying so, and we cap the flue on the same visit.
The fireplace flue gets the full sweep. That means brushes sized to the tile, the smoke chamber and smoke shelf cleared, the firebox and damper checked, and photos from inside before and after. The second flue, the one the furnace used, gets a look with a light and the camera if anything is off, because an orphaned furnace flue is a known Aloha problem. A Level 1 look-over and a written note of anything we find come with it.
It is worth it when there is something to remove. That means visible dust blowing from registers, a remodel that filled the ducts with drywall grit, rodents, or a system that has never been opened in fifty years. It does little for a clean system, and we will tell you if a camera look at the trunk shows one. Our duct cleaning guide covers the evidence, and the price is posted.
Only if the stove is uncertified and not exempt. Oregon's home-sale removal law covers wood stoves and inserts without a DEQ or EPA label, which come out and are destroyed as part of the sale; the seller handles it unless the buyer takes the job on in writing and finishes within 30 days of closing. A labeled stove, or an ornate antique built before 1940, stays. Our stove removal guide explains the label and the paperwork.
Aloha sits between Beaverton and Hillsboro on the Tualatin Valley Highway route, with Cedar Mill and Bethany up 185th Avenue and Cornelius and Forest Grove farther west.
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.