Chimney sweep near you
Yes, Oak Grove and Jennings Lodge are on our route, from the old townsite plats near McLoughlin to the river. The standout calls are insert sweeps and liners in mid-century fireplaces, plus reading stove labels before a sale.
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Oak Grove was platted in the 1890s and Jennings Lodge in 1905, and McLoughlin Boulevard now runs through both. Streets between the highway and the Willamette still hold early houses whose brick chimneys were often built with two flues and no liner.
Much of the housing, though, is mid-century: ranches and bungalows along Oatfield Road and River Road, often built with a masonry fireplace and a furnace flue that a newer gas furnace has since left idle. Some of those fireplaces got a wood insert along the way, and that is the piece that shapes many of our visits here.
An insert is a stove set into an open fireplace, and some older ones were pushed into the firebox with no liner connecting them to the top of the flue, an install the trade calls a slammer. Those vent badly, build creosote fast in the cold smoke chamber above them, and one built before DEQ and EPA labels began in the mid-1980s carries neither, which matters at sale.
Many Oak Grove chimneys are mid-century brick stacks with two flues, one for the fireplace and one for a furnace that may since have moved to a wall vent, and often no steel reinforcing in the brick.
What goes wrong depends on what sits in the firebox. An open fireplace in this stock often needs a crown, a cap and a sweep. An insert with no liner needs a stainless liner run from the stove collar to the top of the flue, and the idle furnace flue needs a cap and a look, because an uncapped flue takes rain straight down into the brick and the basement.
Inserts, idle furnace flues and riverfront moss set the pattern for what Oak Grove and Jennings Lodge houses call about.
A wood insert in a mid-century Oatfield Road fireplace gets swept through its liner if it has one, and pulled out of the firebox if it does not, because the only way to clean the smoke chamber behind a slammer is to move the stove. Either way we read the plate on the back of the unit, because a DEQ or EPA mark there decides what happens when the house sells.
An insert that was slid into an Oak Grove fireplace without a liner needs a stainless liner connecting the stove collar to the flue top, with insulation when the flue is cold or oversized, so the smoke stays hot and the creosote stays thin. The same crew also lines bare brick fireplace flues in the early houses near McLoughlin and furnace flues left behind by gas conversions.
A quarter of Oak Grove residents are 65 or older, and when a long-held house here goes on the market the chimney questions come all at once: does the insert carry a DEQ or EPA label, who removes it if not, and what is the flue behind it like. We do the Level 2 camera inspection the trade recommends at a transfer, read the stove label, and put all of it in one written report the buyer and seller can both use.
The riverfront houses along River Road sit under big trees, and the shaded, water-facing side of a brick chimney there can stay green with moss that holds rain against the mortar and crown. We kill the moss and let it release, repoint what has opened, rebuild the crown if it has cracked through, and finish with a breathable water repellent, never a film sealer that locks moisture inside the brick.
The second flue in a mid-century Oak Grove stack, the one the oil or gas furnace used before it was replaced, can stand open to the sky with nothing on it, and rain, leaves and the odd raccoon come straight down. A cap on that flue, or a sealed cover if nothing will ever use it again, stops the water that otherwise shows up as a stain on the basement wall.
McLoughlin Boulevard, OR 99E, runs the length of Oak Grove and Jennings Lodge, about 8 miles south of downtown Portland and 4 miles short of Oregon City, and it is how we arrive from either direction.
Oak Grove Boulevard is the old main street off the highway, and Oatfield Road and River Road carry us through the residential blocks on the hill side and the river side. On the riverfront, tell us whether the ladder goes up from the road side or the water side, and whether a neighbor's side yard is the easier approach to the chimney.
Oak Grove took its name when surveyor Edward W. Cornell suggested it after his crew ate lunch under a stand of oaks.
A post office called Creighton opened in 1904 and was renamed Oak Grove in 1907, with the botanist Thomas J. Howell as its first postmaster. Jennings Lodge was platted as a townsite in 1905 and named for the Oregon pioneer Berryman Jennings.
Hog Island in the Willamette lies inside Oak Grove's boundaries, and Concord School and the SE Park Avenue MAX station are the landmarks neighbors use.
Oak Grove counted 7,635 housing units in 2020, with a median age of 45 and about a quarter of residents 65 or older.
Yes, both, and the ZIP codes are 97222 and 97267, which they share with Milwaukie. Being unincorporated changes nothing about the visit or the posted price, with no trip charge when the work is done. What it does mean is that permits go to Clackamas County and outdoor burn questions to Clackamas Fire rather than a city hall, and we point you to the right desk when a job needs one.
Ask for three things: the insert's back label, a Level 2 camera inspection of the flue behind it, and whether it has its own liner. An insert with no DEQ or EPA label is uncertified and must be removed and destroyed at the sale, by the seller unless the buyer accepts the job in writing, which brings a 30-day deadline after closing. Our home-sale stove guide has the steps.
Within the week in most cases, and a smoking insert goes near the front of the line because smoke indoors means the flue is not carrying it out. Stop using the stove until we have looked, open a window if the room still smells, and make sure a carbon monoxide alarm is on that floor. A cause we check first in this housing is an insert with no liner and a smoke chamber packed with creosote.
Not until a camera has been through it, and if the joints are open the answer is a stainless liner before the next fire. Brick laid without a clay liner a century ago lets heat and gas through any gap straight into the framing, and the gaps do not show from the hearth. A Level 2 inspection gives you the pictures to decide from, and a liner makes one sealed passage of the old stack.
Yes, slowly. Moss holds water against the brick and the crown, and the shaded side under the trees stays damp longest, so the mortar joints there stay wet through the winter and freeze on the cold nights. The sequence that works is kill the moss, let it loosen and come off, repair what the water has opened, then put a breathable repellent on the masonry. Scraping live moss off first takes mortar with it.
No. Our research found no red day system in unincorporated Clackamas County, so nothing here prohibits a fire on a poor air day the way the Multnomah County rule does a few miles north. What does apply is the DEQ advisory, which asks residents to skip wood heat during winter stagnation and wildfire smoke, and the fire district's outdoor rules for yard debris. The county-by-county guide on this site has the details.
Call us, and keep the fireplace and the basement cleanout door closed in the meantime. An open furnace flue with no cap is an easy way into a house for a raccoon, and a furnace flue has no damper to stop it. Removal follows Oregon wildlife rules, which the animal removal page explains, and once the flue is empty we fit a cap or a sealed cover so it does not happen again.
Milwaukie is next door to the north, Gladstone to the south, Clackamas up the hill and Lake Oswego across the Willamette.
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.