Chimney sweep near you
We cover Multnomah Village end to end, from the Capitol Hwy shops to the streets above Gabriel Park. Expect us for camera checks of 1910s and 1920s brick flues and for the oil-era furnace flues left behind when the house went to gas.
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Multnomah Village's oldest homes are 1910s and 1920s houses in the core along SW Capitol Hwy, built as Multnomah grew around an Oregon Electric Railway stop, typically with a brick chimney for a fireplace and a stove or oil burner.
Portland annexed Multnomah on November 7, 1950, and the houses that went up in the 1940s and 1950s around that date usually carry a different chimney: one masonry fireplace with a clay tile liner. The rail line itself became SW Multnomah Blvd, and the apartments and condos along it and along Capitol Hwy mostly have gas fireplaces or none.
What ties the village together is the ground. Many lots here slope, as they do across Southwest Portland, so a house stepped into its hill can carry a chimney a full story taller on the downhill face than it looks from the street, and that is the face the weather hits.
Multnomah Village has two generations of brick: the 1910s and 1920s stacks near the old depot, built to vent both the fireplace and the furnace and often with no liner at all, and the tile-lined single fireplaces of the annexation-era houses.
The furnace flue is the quiet problem. When an oil burner gave way to a gas furnace that vents out the side wall, the brick flue was left to a water heater or to nothing, and an oversized flue with so little heat in it runs cold, sweats and loses its mortar. On the tall downhill stacks the crown tends to split first and the rain-side joints open next.
Bare brick and orphaned furnace flues on the 1910s houses, tall downhill crowns, fall sweeps and apartment dryer vents make up the Multnomah Village list.
The 1910s and 1920s houses near the old depot were often built with bare brick flues, and a Level 2 camera look often ends in a stainless liner run down the fireplace flue and sized to the firebox. Where an old furnace flue now carries only a water heater, a smaller liner matched to that one appliance keeps the gases warm enough to leave instead of condensing in the brick.
Any village house older than the annexation that is changing owners, or about to see its first fire in a decade, starts with a Level 2 camera inspection. On a hillside lot the camera also saves a dangerous guess, because the downhill face of a three-story stack is not something anyone should judge from a ladder in the rain.
Tall chimneys on the sloped village lots take weather on a face nobody sees from the yard, and the crown on top is often the first thing to split. We rebuild or patch the crown with a drip edge past the brick, repoint the open joints under it and finish with a breathable water repellent so the stack sheds rain instead of drinking it.
The annexation-era houses with one tile-lined fireplace book a sweep every fall before the first fire, and the Level 1 look-over that rides along is where we catch a rusted damper or a crack in the firebrick. On the older two-flue stacks we brush the fireplace side and camera the furnace side on the same visit, since both share one crown and one set of joints.
The apartments and condos along SW Multnomah Blvd and SW Capitol Hwy mostly skip the fireplace, so the vent we clean there is the dryer's, often a long run through a ceiling to a roof jack. Lint in that run is why a load takes two cycles and why the laundry closet feels like a sauna, and we clear it from the dryer to the hood.
We reach Multnomah Village from I-5 by way of SW Barbur Blvd and SW Capitol Hwy, or down SW Multnomah Blvd from Garden Home when we are already on the west side.
SW 35th Ave, SW 45th Ave and SW Vermont St get us onto the residential streets, where many lots slope away from the road. Tell us when you book whether the chimney stands on the uphill or the downhill side of the house, because that decides whether we bring the long ladder and where the truck has to park.
Multnomah grew in the 1910s around an Oregon Electric Railway station, and when the trains stopped the right of way became SW Multnomah Blvd, which now carries traffic through the village.
Portland annexed Multnomah on November 7, 1950, and the 1913 Multnomah School has housed the Multnomah Arts Center since 1979.
Multnomah Days brings a parade and street festival to the village every August.
The Southwest Community Center, with an indoor pool and climbing wall, opened at the corner of Gabriel Park in June 1999, and the park covers about 90 acres.
Mayor Bud Clark fired Police Chief Jim Davis at the Fat City Cafe on April 7, 1987.
Yes, the whole Multnomah neighborhood is, from SW 45th Ave on the west to Capitol Hill Rd on the east and from Vermont down to I-5. Hillside streets, narrow driveways and chimneys on the downhill side are normal here and change nothing about the posted price, and there is no trip charge on top of it when we do the work.
Leave it cold and call; outside the October and November rush we can usually be there within the week. Smoke in the room on a hillside house often turns out to be a tall, cold flue that needs a long warm-up, a damper that only half opens, or a bird nest above the smoke shelf, and none of those is safe to test with another fire. We bring the camera so the visit ends with an answer.
Not forever, but not tonight either: the flue needs a Level 2 camera inspection and, most likely, a stainless liner before it carries another fire. Bare brick with a century of open joints gives heat and sparks a path into the wall framing, which is the hazard a stainless reline addresses. Once the liner is in and the smoke chamber is sealed, the old depot-era fireplace can return to service with a continuous flue.
Because the brick flue that carried the furnace exhaust now serves only the water heater, or nothing at all. A flue that cold condenses acidic water that works on the tile and mortar from inside; common signs are a damp patch on the basement chimney wall and white staining on the brick. The fix is a liner sized to the water heater or a capped, retired flue, and our orphaned chimney guide explains both.
Just the county one, as far as we have found: Multnomah County's red and yellow days apply to the village the same as to any Portland address. On a red day every wood-burning fireplace, stove and insert in the village goes dark until noon the next day unless the county has the household's exemption on file, and a yellow day is a request to consider limiting burning. Our wood burning guide keeps the details and exemption steps in one place.
If the insert has no DEQ or EPA label on its back, yes, Oregon's home-sale removal law requires it to come out and be destroyed. The seller handles that before closing unless a written agreement passes the job to the buyer, who then has 30 days after closing. Open masonry fireplaces are exempt, and our stove removal guide covers the disposal receipt and the DEQ notice.
Use our guide to vetting an Oregon contractor, which walks through the state's lookup and the questions worth asking before anyone climbs a hillside roof. For a village house, add two of your own: have they relined a bare brick flue before, and will the written report include the camera stills from your flue rather than a generic checklist. Posted prices and photos are how we answer those ourselves.
From the village the same crew climbs to Hillsdale and the Southwest Hills, drops into Bridlemile and Raleigh Hills, and runs south to Lake Oswego.
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.