Chimney sweep near you
Tigard is inside our service area, and the calls there are repointing and caps for the 1960s brick near Hall Boulevard and Greenburg Road, chase inspections on Bull Mountain and long dryer vents in the two-story tracts.
Updated
Tigard's chimneys fall into two eras: 1960s and 1970s masonry, and the metal fireboxes that came after. Tigard was a farm town until it incorporated in 1961, then grew from roughly 6,500 residents in 1970 to over 42,000 by 2000.
The streets near Hall Boulevard, Greenburg Road and Metzger were built when a masonry fireplace was the common choice, and those brick chimneys are now fifty to sixty-five years old, which in Portland rain is when crowns crack, mortar joints open and a furnace flue that shared the stack is often left idle by a furnace that vents out the wall.
Bull Mountain is different ground: many of its houses date from around 1989, with some late-1970s houses on acre lots, and the fireplaces are commonly factory-built metal fireboxes in framed chases, often on a steep roof above a view lot where the ladder work is half the job. The two-story tracts of the 1980s and 1990s often have long dryer vent runs, which is the other call from those streets.
Tigard has almost no pre-war brick; the John Tigard House is one of the few houses left from before the war, so the masonry here is chiefly 1960s and 1970s brick, and the newer stock is metal.
On the brick, the crown and the joints go first, then rain reaches the damper and rusts it, and the furnace flue turns into a cold, wet shaft once the furnace is gone. On Bull Mountain the inspection is a different checklist: rust on the chase cover, the gap between the pipe and the chase framing, cracked refractory panels, and a termination cap high above the downhill grade.
Tigard's calls split by the ground under the house: brick repairs on the flat 1960s streets, chase inspections and dryer vents on the hill.
The 1960s and 1970s brick chimneys near Hall Boulevard, Greenburg Road and in Metzger have reached the age where mortar joints on the weather side wash out and the brick faces start to spall, and that is a repointing job before it becomes a rebuild. We grind and repoint the joints, replace the worst brick and finish with a water repellent that lets the brick breathe.
Bull Mountain fireplaces are commonly factory-built units in framed chases on steep roofs, and the inspection there is about the chase cover, the pipe clearances in the attic, the refractory panels and the cap, not the brick. A view-lot roof needs roof hooks and a second ladder, so the visit takes longer than a flat ranch, and the photos from inside the pipe come with it.
An uncapped 1960s flue in Tigard takes a winter of rain straight down onto the smoke shelf and the damper, and the first sign is a rusted damper that will not close or a musty smell in June. A stainless cap with a spark screen keeps rain, squirrels and birds out, and on a two-flue stack we cap the idle furnace flue too.
The two-story tract houses from the 1980s and 1990s often put the laundry room far from an outside wall, so the dryer vent runs through the floor system or up through the roof, and lint settles in every bend of a run that long. We clear the full run, dryer to hood, check that the hood flap swings freely, and flag a flexible foil duct for replacement with rigid metal.
A forced-air system in a 1980s Tigard tract house can hold thirty-plus years of construction dust, pet hair and drywall grit in the trunk lines, and the call usually comes after a remodel or when a register blows visible dust. We clean the supply and return runs with the system under negative pressure and show you the before and after inside the trunk.
We reach Tigard on OR 217 to Hall Boulevard, Greenburg Road or Scholls Ferry Road, on I-5 to the Bridgeport Village end of the city, or along Pacific Highway when the freeway is crawling.
Bull Mountain Road climbs from Pacific Highway, and the streets off it are steep, with chimneys that rise two or three stories above the downhill grade; tell us when you book that the house is on the hill, so we bring the long ladder and roof hooks. Durham Road and Hall Boulevard cover the flat south end near Cook Park and the high school.
Tigard incorporated in 1961, and the railroad had already shortened Tigardville to Tigard in 1907 to stop confusion with Wilsonville.
Cook Park hosts the Tigard Festival of Balloons every late June, an event that began as part of the Portland Rose Festival.
The 1994 Supreme Court case Dolan v. City of Tigard, which the city lost, set the rough proportionality test for conditions on development.
The 12-story building at Lincoln Center is the tallest in Tigard and in Washington County, and Stash Tea and Consumer Cellular are both based in the city.
Residents give directions by Cook Park, the Tigard Transit Center, Tigard High School, the John Tigard House and the Bridgeport Village end of town.
Yes, 97223 and 97224 are both inside the area we serve, and the unincorporated parts of Bull Mountain and Metzger are covered the same as the city streets. The sweep, the camera inspection and the dryer vent cleaning each have a posted price, and the drive costs nothing extra when the work gets done. The only place the city line matters is the wood burning rule, not your bill.
Leave it cold, air the room out, and call. A fireplace that filled the room with smoke goes ahead of routine sweeps on our Tigard schedule, which in most months means this week. Do not light it again to see whether it was a one-off, because the causes range from a shut damper to a blocked or cracked flue, and you cannot tell which from the hearth. Check the carbon monoxide alarm on that floor while you wait.
It depends on the city line. The county describes its program, which runs November 1 to March 1, as covering unincorporated Washington County plus Hillsboro and Cornelius, so an unincorporated Bull Mountain or Metzger address is in, while an address inside Tigard city limits follows only the Oregon DEQ advisories, since our research found no Tigard ordinance. If you are unsure, ask when you book; our wood burning rules guide shows how a red day is posted.
Yes, and it is routine on the view lots. We set the long ladder on the uphill side where the roof is lowest, use roof hooks on the steep pitch, and sweep a factory-built unit from the bottom when the top is unsafe to work from, with the vacuum running at the firebox. The chase cover and the cap still get looked at from above, with a camera on a pole if the pitch says no to boots.
A dryer that needs two cycles usually points to a restricted vent, and yes, we clean dryer vents on the same truck as chimneys. In a two-story tract house the duct can run a long way through the floor framing or up to the roof, and lint packs the bends. We clear the whole run from dryer to hood, make sure the flap opens, and check that the duct is metal rather than foil.
Order a Level 2 camera inspection before you close; the chimney trade recommends one when a house is sold. On a 1972 Tigard house it shows whether the tile liner is cracked and whether the insert has its own liner or vents into the open flue. Oregon's home-sale removal law requires an uncertified stove or insert to come out and be destroyed at the sale, so ask the seller for its label.
From Tigard the route continues south along Pacific Highway to King City and Sherwood and across OR 217 and I-5 to Tualatin and Lake Oswego.
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.