Chimney sweep near you
Troutdale is in our service area, and its chimneys get the Gorge east wind before most of the metro. The wind leaves caps and rain covers to replace and flashing to reset after ice, and the 1970s to 1990s factory-built fireplaces need camera checks.
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Most Troutdale homes went up between 1970 and 2000, when the city grew from 1,661 people to 13,777, around an old downtown of early 1900s houses on the Historic Columbia River Highway.
The downtown houses, the Fred Harlow House among them, have brick chimneys, many built without liners, that have taken a century of wind. The subdivisions commonly have factory-built metal fireplaces in framed chases or, in the earlier 1970s tracts, masonry fireplaces with clay tile liners, and both share the same weak points in Troutdale: the cap, the cover and the flashing on the east side.
Troutdale sits where the Columbia River Gorge opens onto the metro, and when high pressure builds east of the Cascades the cold wind comes through the gap and over this town first, with gusts strong enough for wind advisories from here east.
A common Troutdale fireplace is a factory-built metal unit in a framed chase, with a masonry fireplace in the earlier 1970s tracts and often unlined brick stacks on the century-old houses downtown.
Gusts strip caps, rock rain covers loose and peel back chase covers at the windward edge, and the rain that rides the wind goes sideways into the east face of brick and under flashing that holds in a calm storm. Ice follows: the January 2024 storm paired Gorge gusts above 80 miles an hour with freezing rain, and falling limbs can take flashing, crowns and caps with them.
Troutdale's calls come in the order the weather does: wind, then ice, then the slow work on the old downtown brick.
A common call after a Gorge wind night is a cap in the neighbor's yard or a rain cover flapping on a metal flue, and the east wind comes several times a winter. We replace stripped caps with stainless ones anchored to the masonry or clamped to the pipe, and we fit chase covers with hemmed, screwed-down edges rather than a flat sheet the next gust can lift.
A Troutdale leak that shows only during an east wind is often the flashing or the cover on the windward side, where sideways rain gets under step flashing that sheds a normal storm fine. We reset and reseal the flashing, replace a rusted or lifted chase cover, and on wide chimneys add a cricket so the wind-driven water has somewhere to go besides the attic.
Between 1970 and 2000 Troutdale added most of its houses, and the factory-built fireplaces in them are now 25 to 55 years old, an age when chase covers can rust through, flue pipes corrode and refractory panels crack. A Level 2 camera inspection before a sale, after a storm or before a first fire in years tells you whether the unit is sound, and on the downtown brick it tells you whether there was ever a liner.
A wood-burning fireplace or stove in Troutdale works hard, because the east wind makes a house feel colder than the thermometer says, and the yearly sweep with its Level 1 look-over is where the wind-bent cap, the loose rain cover and the sideways-soaked brick get noticed. The flue gets photographed before and after, and on the Harlow-era houses downtown the second flue beside it gets the camera.
The early 1900s houses along the Historic Columbia River Highway often have brick flues that were built bare, and a century of wind-driven rain has done the joints no favors, so a fireplace flue that is coming back into use is relined in stainless, sized to the firebox. On the 1970s masonry fireplaces a cracked tile liner from a hot fire or a settling stack gets the same treatment.
Troutdale is an I-84 trip from anywhere in the metro, off at 257th Avenue, and Stark Street and Halsey Street bring us in from the Gresham side without the freeway.
257th Avenue takes us through the subdivisions, but ladders stay on the truck during a Gorge gust, so a job booked on a wind-advisory day may slide a day. Downtown, near Glenn Otto Park and the old highway, tell us where a truck can stand and which side of the house the chimney is on.
Pioneer John Harlow named Troutdale for a trout pond in a dale near his house, and the town incorporated in 1907, the same year the electric interurban to Gresham began running.
The Reynolds aluminum plant opened in 1941 and was the area's biggest employer until it closed in 2000.
McMenamins Edgefield occupies the former Multnomah County Poor Farm, and the Fred Harlow House and the Troutdale Methodist Episcopal Church are on the National Register.
The east wind is so much a part of life here that several local businesses carry East Wind in their names.
When the Eagle Creek Fire burned in September 2017, winds blowing west out of the Gorge carried smoke and up to an inch of ash onto the metro on September 4 and 5, and the I-84 corridor from Troutdale east was an evacuation zone on September 12.
Yes, every residential address in Troutdale is in our area. That runs from the old downtown on the Columbia River Highway to the 1970s to 1990s subdivisions off 257th Avenue. The posted price is the same here as in Portland, and the drive out I-84 is part of the job rather than an extra line when we do the work.
Keep the fireplace cold and put a bucket under any drip. If the cover is flapping where it could come down on someone, stay clear of that side of the house rather than climbing up after it. We can usually get a temporary cover on within days and the fabricated replacement on soon after, and after a widespread wind event we work through the calls in the order they came in.
The full flue is brushed from top or bottom with the firebox sealed and a vacuum running. The smoke shelf and smoke chamber are cleared, the firebox swept out, and the Level 1 look-over covers the damper, firebrick, crown and cap; in Troutdale we spend extra time on the cap and the east face of the brick, since that is where the wind has been working. You get photos from inside the flue before and after.
Because the east face takes the wind-driven rain and then freezes on the cold nights that follow a Gorge wind. Water freezing inside brick pops the face off, which the trade calls spalling, while the west face stays drier and keeps its skin. The fix is new brick where the faces have gone, repointed joints, a crown that stops feeding water in from the top, and a breathable repellent.
Yes, the county restriction applies in Troutdale as it does everywhere in Multnomah County, and the city's own rules cover outdoor yard debris burning rather than fireplaces and stoves. On a red day, which the county can call in any month, every wood and pellet fire in town goes out from midday to midday unless the household holds an exemption such as sole-source heat, low income or a heating outage, and yellow is a request to consider limiting burning.
Order a Level 2 inspection, which the standard recommends whenever a house is sold. It should include the camera up the metal flue and a look at the top of the chase, because on a Troutdale prefab the questions are a cover rusted or lifted by wind, a flue pipe corroded where water got in, cracked refractory panels and a missing cap. An uncertified wood stove left behind by the seller falls under Oregon's home-sale removal rule as well.
Use the state contractor lookup, which our contractor-check guide explains step by step, first. Then find out if the price is posted ahead of the visit, if the report will include photos of your cap, cover and flashing from the roof, and how they handle a wind-advisory day, because a crew that will climb in a Gorge gust to keep a slot is telling you something. Posted prices and roof photos are our answer to the first two.
West along I-84 the same truck covers Fairview, Wood Village and Gresham, and it turns south for the Damascus country and back toward the airport neighborhoods.
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.