Chimney sweep near you
We cover University Park and Portsmouth end to end, and the work splits by era: camera inspections and liners on the oldest brick near the university, sweeps on the postwar tile-lined fireplaces, and dryer vents across New Columbia.
Updated
The oldest houses in University Park and Portsmouth stand on the 1883 Portsmouth plat around N Portsmouth Ave and Lombard and on the early streets near the University of Portland, whose land the Archdiocese bought in 1901.
An early house came with a brick chimney, often built without a liner, one flue for the fireplace and one for a coal or oil furnace, and both have spent a century in the rain. Give us an exact address and the nearest cross street when you book: University Park's streets run on diagonals with no numbered grid, so a cross street saves a loop around the block.
The postwar houses that filled in the rest more often have a single masonry fireplace with a clay tile liner. New Columbia, the 82-acre mixed-income development built across much of Portsmouth in the 2000s, has modern heating and few wood fireplaces, so the calls from there are dryer vents and ducts, and with close to half of Portsmouth households renting in 2010, many of those units are managed rentals.
University Park and Portsmouth hold three kinds of chimney: unlined or early-tile brick stacks with two flues on the oldest houses, a single tile-lined fireplace flue on the postwar houses, and modern vents with no masonry at all across New Columbia.
On the old brick, the fireplace flue may have been swept at some point, but the furnace flue beside it can go unchecked for decades after the oil furnace came out, and a water heater left alone on it runs that flue cold and wet. On the postwar houses we look hardest for a cracked tile at the first offset and a crown letting water into the top course.
Three housing eras in one ZIP code split the University Park and Portsmouth list: camera inspections and liners on the old brick, sweeps on postwar tile, and vents and ducts at New Columbia.
A Level 2 camera inspection is the right first visit for an older house near the University of Portland that is being bought, rented out for the first time, or lit after years cold, because the camera shows what the flue is lined with and where the furnace flue next to it stands. At a tenant turnover it puts the written report and photos in the file before anyone lights a fire.
The tile-lined postwar fireplaces across the grid are the sweep-and-look-over regulars: opening sealed, brushes sized to the flue, vacuum on, and the Level 1 check of the damper, smoke chamber and firebox at the end. On the older brick near Willamette Blvd we sweep the fireplace flue and look at the furnace flue on the same trip.
An early fireplace flue near the university that was never tiled gets a stainless liner sized to the firebox, with insulation where the clearances to framing need it, and a furnace flue left to a lone water heater gets a smaller liner matched to that one appliance so it stops running cold and condensing. When the old furnace flue serves nothing, we cap and seal it rather than leave it open to the weather.
New Columbia's townhomes and apartments were built with few if any wood fireplaces, so the vent that matters there is the dryer's, taken run by run and unit by unit. We clean each run from the dryer connection out to the hood, check that the hood flap opens, and show you the lint that came out.
Rental turnover in Portsmouth brings duct calls after a long tenancy or a remodel that left drywall dust in the returns. The EPA suggests cleaning ducts only when they hold visible debris, pests or mold, not on a schedule, so we look inside first and tell you plainly when the ducts are clean enough to leave alone.
We reach University Park and Portsmouth from I-5 by way of N Lombard St or N Columbia Blvd, then turn in on N Portsmouth Ave, N Chautauqua Blvd or N Fessenden St toward the campus and the parks.
Because the streets around the university run on diagonals, give us the nearest cross street with your address, and name Columbia Park, McKenna Park or the Charles Jordan Community Center if you are near one. At New Columbia, tell us the building and where a truck can stand, and on the bluff along Willamette a chimney facing the river may mean setting the ladder from the back yard.
University Park takes its name from Portland University, a Methodist school founded in 1891 that closed in 1900; the Archdiocese bought the land in 1901 and it became the University of Portland.
The Portsmouth Real Estate Association platted its subdivision around Portsmouth Avenue and Lombard Street in 1883, eight years before Portland University was founded.
University Park's streets run on diagonal axes with no numbered system, so locals give directions by street name and landmark rather than by number.
New Columbia covers 82 acres of Portsmouth, and the Peninsula Crossing Trail runs along the neighborhood's western boundary.
Columbia Park, McKenna Park and the Charles Jordan Community Center are the meeting points people name, with the university's bluff campus above the Willamette at the south end.
Yes, the whole of 97203 on this side of the peninsula, from the campus bluff to Columbia Boulevard and every building at New Columbia. Houses, townhomes and apartment buildings are all booked the same way, with the price for the job posted ahead of time and no trip fee added when the work goes ahead. Property managers can book several units on one visit.
Tell the tenant to leave the fireplace cold, and we can usually be there the same week outside the October and November rush. Smoke smell from an unused fireplace is often a draft problem or creosote reacting to damp air, but it can also mean a blocked flue, so it is a look-first job rather than a sweep booked blind. The written report can go to the tenant as well as to you.
Every sweep includes the firebox, smoke chamber, damper and the full flue, done with the opening sealed and a vacuum running. A Level 1 look-over of the parts we can reach without tools is part of it. The flue photos, before and after, come with the visit, along with a written note on anything that needs following up, which is what goes in a rental file for the next tenant.
Not before a camera has been through it. A bare brick flue from 1905 depends on every mortar joint being tight, and after this long they rarely are; an open joint is a path for heat and gases into the framing. The repair that makes it usable is a stainless liner cut to the full height, sized for the fireplace and connected to a new cap, and the camera first tells us whether the brick can take it.
Both, because a red day in Multnomah County covers fireplaces, wood and pellet stoves and outdoor wood burning devices like fire pits and chimineas. It runs from noon one day to noon the next, with exemptions only for county-approved households, such as those heating solely with wood. The county can post one in any month, including during summer wildfire smoke. Cooking food is treated differently. Our wood burning rules guide walks through the colors and the exemption form.
It is wise: the trade recommends, though no law requires, a Level 2 camera inspection when a home is sold. A general home inspector usually looks from the hearth, without a camera. On a 1950s University Park house the camera checks the clay tile liner joints, the crown and the damper. A wood stove or insert in the house also gets checked for its DEQ or EPA label, since an uncertified one must come out at sale.
Run the company through the state lookup described step by step in our contractor-check guide, and keep a copy of the result with the property file. Then ask whether the price is posted before the visit and whether the report comes with the camera images from the flue, because a landlord needs both on paper. We answer yes to both, and the guide tells you what else to look at.
Lombard and Columbia tie University Park and Portsmouth to the rest of the peninsula, and US 30 over the St. Johns Bridge carries the same crew to the west hills.
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.