Chimney sweep near you
We cover Piedmont and Humboldt between our Kenton and Alberta routes, and the calls here are camera inspections, liners and rebuilds for tall 1890s and 1900s brick chimneys, many built without liners and often more than one to a house.
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Piedmont's homes are large Victorian and early 1900s houses around Peninsula Park with tall brick chimneys, often more than one, built after Edward Quackenbush platted the streetcar suburb in 1889 and sold it as Portland's Evergreen Suburb.
Each stack carried a fireplace flue and a flue for the coal or oil furnace, often with no clay liner in either, and the taller the chimney the more of it stands above the roof with nothing holding it but its own mortar. Historic Piedmont runs past today's boundary into Humboldt and King, so the big houses do not stop at the neighborhood line.
Humboldt's smaller bungalows carry a single brick stack of the same construction, and the newer multifamily buildings along N Williams Ave have gas fireplaces or none. Piedmont is also one of the city's six conservation districts, which means visible exterior changes on a contributing house can come with a question for the city before the work starts.
The signature chimney of Piedmont and Humboldt is tall, unlined and often one of several on the house: a Victorian or foursquare stack with two flues that rises well above a steep roof, built when a chimney was simply stacked brick and mortar.
Height is the problem. Tall, slender unreinforced stacks are the most vulnerable chimneys in an earthquake and can break at the roofline, and the height catches the most wind-driven rain, so the top courses open up first. Inside, the fireplace flue may have been swept for years while the furnace flue beside it, abandoned when gas arrived, has been condensing and shedding mortar into the basement cleanout.
Tall unlined stacks put camera inspections, rebuilds and liners on the Piedmont and Humboldt list, with top-sealing dampers and sweeps for the fireplaces still in use.
A Level 2 camera inspection comes first on any Piedmont house with two or three unlined stacks, because each flue has to be checked on its own and the camera is the only way to see which ones have open joints, which ones were ever tiled, and which ones still serve a water heater. We also look at how the stack meets the roof and talk through what an unbraced chimney of that height does in a quake.
When the top of a tall Piedmont stack has lost its mortar past the point of repointing, or has already shifted, the answer is a rebuild from the roofline up with the old brick cleaned and reused where it is sound and new brick matched where it is not. On a contributing house in the conservation district we check with the city about review before the first course comes off.
Fireplaces in the older houses here often vent into bare brick, and the fix is a stainless liner sized to the firebox and run the full height of the stack, which on a tall Piedmont chimney is a longer liner than most. A furnace flue that now serves only a water heater gets its own smaller liner so the flue stops running cold and wet.
Old houses with several fireplaces often have at least one that never gets lit, and a rusted throat damper on that flue leaks warm air up and cold air down all winter. A top-sealing damper on a cable closes the flue at the cap with a gasket, which is the usual answer on a Humboldt bungalow or a Piedmont parlor fireplace that is kept for looks.
The fireplaces that do get used on these blocks burn through the wet months, and a yearly sweep of the flue with a Level 1 look-over keeps the creosote under the eighth-inch mark the trade sweeps at. On a house with two or three stacks we sweep the ones in use and check the others for caps and blockages on the same visit.
Piedmont and Humboldt are a quick turn off I-5 at the Rosa Parks Way exit, with N Killingsworth St, N Williams Ave and N Albina Ave carrying us through the neighborhoods and Peninsula Park as the landmark in the middle.
On the residential streets between Killingsworth and Rosa Parks, a house with multiple stacks gets the ladder set from whichever side yard gives the cleanest line to the tallest one. If yours is one of the big houses near Peninsula Park or Jefferson High School, tell us how many chimneys it has, because each flue adds time to a camera visit.
Piedmont was platted in 1889 by Edward Quackenbush and marketed as Portland's Evergreen Suburb, devoted exclusively to dwellings.
Peninsula Park opened Portland's first public rose garden in 1909 and holds about 5,700 roses.
Jefferson High School on N Kerby Ave opened in 1908 as Albina High School, and since 2011 its Middle College Program has sent students to classes at the nearby Cascade campus of Portland Community College.
The NABISCO plant on Columbia Boulevard near Piedmont was completed in August 1950.
Piedmont is one of the six conservation districts created from the 1993 Albina Community Plan, and historic Piedmont reaches into present-day Humboldt and King.
Yes, every block of both neighborhoods in both ZIP codes, from the Williams corridor to Peninsula Park and up to the Columbia Boulevard edge. A house with three chimneys and a bungalow with one are booked the same way, at the posted price with the drive included once the work is booked; the only thing that changes with more stacks is the time we set aside.
By August if you want a pick of dates. A multi-flue house is a half-day visit rather than an hour, and the weeks after the first cold snap in October fill fastest across North Portland. Booking in late summer also means any repair the camera finds, a liner or repointing, can be done in dry weather before the fireplaces are wanted.
Each flue you use gets swept from firebox to cap with the opening sealed and a vacuum running. Each also gets the Level 1 look at its damper, smoke chamber and firebox. The flues you do not use get a light and a check for a cap, a blockage or a nest, and a note on whether a top-sealing damper would stop them leaking heat. Photos from inside every flue come with the visit.
Keep it cold until a camera has been down it. An unlined 1895 flue is only as sound as its weakest mortar joint, and a joint that has opened lets heat and gas into the framing it passes. If the camera shows the brick is intact, a stainless liner sized to the fireplace and run the full height makes the flue continuous again; if the stack has shifted, the liner waits for the masonry.
Only with a county exemption on file. Multnomah County exempts households in cases such as wood or pellets being the only way to heat the main living space, or income under the county threshold, but the exemption has to be applied for before the red day and renewed every year before the end of September. Without it, fireplaces, stoves and fire pits stay off from noon to noon. Our wood burning rules guide links the application.
It can, and we find out before we start rather than after. Piedmont is a conservation district, so visible exterior changes on a contributing house may trigger historic resource review; the city's list of exempt repairs is the thing to check for your address, and we do that as part of the quote. Repointing with matched mortar and brick keeps the stack looking as it did, which is what we do regardless.
Our contractor-check guide walks through the state lookup line by line and tells you what the result should show before anyone sets a ladder. After that, ask the company how it handles a chimney this tall: whether it brings the camera for every flue, whether the price is posted before the visit, and whether you see the images. A tall unlined stack is not the place for a quick brush and a guess.
Killingsworth and Rosa Parks Way run the same crew east into Woodlawn and Alberta and west to Kenton and the Overlook bluff.
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.