Chimney sweep near you
Yes, we work the unincorporated streets of Clackamas behind the Town Center and along 82nd Drive. The calls split three ways: dryer vents in the townhomes and apartments, 1980s factory-built fireplaces, and the older farmhouse chimneys that often vented an oil furnace.
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Clackamas is a commercial district with houses tucked in behind it. Before the mall, the land between Milwaukie and Happy Valley was a small residential area, and older ranches and farmhouses survive off SE 82nd Drive and Sunnyside Road, brick chimneys and all.
Clackamas Town Center opened in 1981, and the housing that followed it through the 1980s was commonly built with a factory-built fireplace: a metal firebox in a framed chase, a chase cover on top, and no brick anywhere on the roof. Those covers and the refractory panels inside the fireboxes are now around forty years old, and forty years is a long time for either part.
The townhomes and apartments near the Clackamas Town Center Transit Center, built in the 2000s and 2010s, have gas fireplaces or none, often on shared vent systems the building owner maintains. What those buildings do have is dryers, some of them on long ducts, which is why dryer vent cleaning is a bigger part of our work here than in the single-family suburbs around it.
Clackamas chimneys come in three broad types: brick on the pre-1970s houses, often with an oil furnace flue beside the fireplace flue; metal pipe in a framed chase on the 1980s houses; and B-vent or direct-vent gas runs in the multifamily buildings.
The brick ones often fail where the oil furnace used to be: the furnace flue, converted to gas or abandoned, runs cold and wet and its tile joints open. The 1980s metal ones fail at the top, where a flat chase cover rusts through, and at the bottom, where the firebox panels crack. Gas runs fail quietly, a loose joint or a blocked termination, and show up only on inspection.
What a Clackamas address needs depends on which of the three housing ages it falls in, and these are the calls each age produces.
Townhomes and apartments near the transit center can run dryer ducts up through interior walls or across a floor to reach an outside hood, and a duct that long with a few elbows fills with lint faster than a short straight one. We clean it from the dryer connection to the hood, make sure the hood flap swings free, and hand you the lint so a landlord or manager can see what the problem was.
A 1980s Clackamas house with a factory-built fireplace that has never had a camera up its pipe is a good candidate for a Level 2, and more so if it is changing hands. We scan the pipe for rust and separated joints, check the refractory panels and the damper, and look at the chase cover from the roof, then put the findings and the photos in a written report.
The farmhouses and early ranches off SE 82nd Drive were commonly heated by oil furnaces vented into the brick chimney, and after a conversion to gas that flue is either serving a water heater it is far too large for or sitting abandoned and wet. We line it in stainless sized to what still uses it, or seal it off properly if nothing does, and we line the fireplace flue beside it when the camera shows open tile joints.
Many of the pre-1970s houses on the side streets still have open masonry fireplaces, and where they burn wood the routine is a sweep each fall plus the Level 1 look at everything we can reach. On a Clackamas ranch we brush the fireplace flue, check the damper and smoke chamber, and shine a light down the furnace flue next to it before we come off the roof.
Cracked and crumbling refractory panels are a frequent finding inside a 1980s Clackamas prefab firebox, and a panel that has cracked through or whose face has powdered is a reason to keep the fireplace cold. We replace the panels with the set made for that model, or a listed universal set cut to fit, and the fireplace goes back into service.
I-205 is the way into Clackamas from every direction, with exits at Sunnyside Road and at OR 212 and OR 224, and SE 82nd Avenue, which is OR 213, comes down from Portland on the surface.
Around the Town Center, SE 82nd Drive and Sunnyside Road carry us onto the residential side streets. For an apartment or townhome, tell us the building and unit, where a truck can stand for an hour, and whether the dryer hood is on an outside wall or the roof; for a house, a driveway on the chimney side is all we need.
Clackamas Town Center opened on March 6, 1981, with JCPenney, Meier and Frank, Nordstrom, Sears and Montgomery Ward as its first anchors, and the county had rezoned the neighborhood around it for commercial use.
The MAX Green Line has ended at the Clackamas Town Center Transit Center since September 2009. Tonya Harding practiced at the Town Center ice rink in the 1990s, before the rink was removed in 2007.
Clackamas is pronounced CLACK-uh-muss, and Oregon Routes 212, 213 and 224 all pass through along with I-205. Camp Withycombe, a military base, sits in Clackamas, and the high schools serving the area are Rex Putnam, Clackamas and Adrienne C. Nelson.
Yes, unincorporated status changes nothing for us; 97015 is in the area and the posted price is the same as for a Milwaukie or Happy Valley address. What it does change is who answers permit questions: for a house in unincorporated Clackamas that is the county, not a city hall, and we say so when a liner or a stove install needs a permit.
Either of you can book it, and in a rental the duct is often the owner's to maintain, so ask first. Check the lint screen and the hose behind the dryer yourself; if both are clear and loads still take two cycles, the duct inside the wall is the likely cause. A lint-packed duct is a fire risk in the whole building, worth mentioning when you ask, and we give you a photo of the lint for the file.
Rust inside a factory-built firebox means water has been reaching it, usually from the chase cover or the storm collar at the top of the chase. Rust on the firebox floor and the damper is a reason for a Level 2 inspection before the next fire, because a rusted-through firebox or pipe is not a repairable part, it is a replacement. Keep the fireplace cold, and check the carpet or hearth for staining after a hard rain.
Usually within the week if you call before the forecast turns cold; after that, expect to wait a week or two. October is when every fireplace in the county is remembered at once, and a sweep plus the Level 1 look takes about an hour on a single-story ranch, so the calendar fills by the day. If the fireplace smoked last time you used it, say so, because that moves it from routine to look-first.
If the camera shows open joints or no tile, yes, because even a few fires a year through a flue that leaks heat into framing is too many. A Level 2 inspection answers the question in one visit; a sound tile-lined flue needs only a sweep and a cap, while an unlined or cracked one gets a stainless liner matched to the fireplace opening. The old furnace flue beside it gets looked at in the same visit.
Two different rules. Backyard burning is off the table inside the DEQ burn ban boundary, which covers the urban part of Clackamas year-round, and outside it Clackamas Fire sets the seasons and takes the call before you light. The fireplace indoors is a separate question with no county curtailment rule behind it; on a bad air day DEQ issues an advisory and asks you to hold off, and the status is posted daily.
No, open fireplaces and gas log sets are outside Oregon's home-sale removal law, which covers uncertified wood stoves and wood-burning inserts. What a sale does bring is the Level 2 inspection the chimney trade recommends on a transfer, and on a 1980s prefab that means a camera up the pipe, a look at the refractory panels, and a written report with the images. An uncertified wood insert in the firebox would change the answer.
Clackamas sits in the middle of our Clackamas County stops: Happy Valley uphill, Milwaukie and Oak Grove toward the river, Gladstone and Oregon City down I-205 and Damascus out OR 212.
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.