Chimney sweep near you
Yes, we come out to Damascus and Boring, where the calls are rural: sweeps for wood stoves that heat the house all winter, glazed creosote from long slow burns, and the label question Oregon's home-sale law raises when an acreage property sells.
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Acreage homes and farmhouses in Damascus and Boring often have a wood stove, sometimes as the main heat, because this is where the metro turns into farm country, with thirty-odd nurseries around Boring alone.
A stove that runs from October to April puts far more smoke through a chimney than an occasional fireplace, and the chimney is often a run of single-wall connector pipe into a Class A stack through the roof, or an insert shoved into an older masonry fireplace. Both build creosote fast when the wood is wet or the air is turned down for the night.
The newer subdivisions along OR 212 toward Happy Valley are the exception, built in the 2000s and 2010s with factory-built or gas fireplaces, and they get the same chase and vent work as the hill above them. Everywhere else, outbuildings and shops with their own stoves and flues are part of the territory, and the stoves in those buildings count under Oregon's home-sale rule too.
Out here the chimney is often a steel pipe rather than a brick stack: single-wall or double-wall connector from the stove to a ceiling support box, then listed Class A chimney through the roof to a cap with a spark screen.
On a stove chimney, creosote comes first. Glaze builds in a connector run that is too long or too cool and in a Class A section over a stove damped down all night, and that glaze is what a chimney fire burns. An insert pushed into an old farmhouse fireplace without a liner dumps smoke into a cold chamber built for an open fire and glazes it fast.
Stove country produces its own list, and in Damascus and Boring these are the jobs wood heat and acreage chimneys call for once the stoves are lit in the fall.
A stove that carries a Boring farmhouse through the winter needs its connector pipe and Class A chimney swept whenever buildup reaches an eighth of an inch, which on a full-time stove can come around more than once a winter. We pull the connector, brush the chimney from the cap down, clean the baffle and the catalytic combustor if it has one, and check the clearances while the pipe is apart.
Glazed, third-degree creosote is the shiny black layer left by wet fir burned slow overnight in a stove with the air shut down, and stove country is where we find it. A brush slides over it, so we use rotary tools or a chemical treatment that softens the glaze so it can be swept, and a flue that has glazed badly gets a camera check for the cracked tile or warped pipe that a chimney fire leaves behind.
An insert in an old Damascus farmhouse fireplace that was never given a liner gets a stainless liner the full height of the chimney, insulated so the smoke stays warm the whole way, and a new stove going into a house with no chimney gets a Class A system through the roof with the clearances the listing calls for. We handle any permit a new stove install needs.
When an acreage property in Damascus or Boring sells, Oregon's home-sale law reaches the wood stoves in the house, shop and barn alike, and an uncertified one must be removed, destroyed and reported to DEQ. We read every label on the property, run the Level 2 camera inspection on the chimneys that will stay in service, and put it in one report for the closing file.
A Class A chimney out here should end in a listed cap with a spark arrestor screen, and on a nursery or a field edge that screen is what keeps an ember from leaving the flue and landing in dry grass in August. We replace caps that have rusted or blown off with the cap made for that pipe, and we put a screened cap on the masonry chimneys that have none.
OR 212 is the road through Damascus and on to Boring, reached from I-205 at the Clackamas interchange, and US 26 out of Gresham gets us to the Boring side from the north.
SE 172nd Avenue and SE 242nd Avenue are the connectors between the subdivisions and the acreage. Rural addresses here come with long gravel driveways and gates, so tell us the gate code, whether the drive will take a truck in wet weather, and which building the stove is in; a photo of the stove and its pipe gets you a price before we roll.
Damascus incorporated in 2004 as the first new city in Oregon in 22 years, voted to disincorporate in 2016, and the Oregon Supreme Court reinstated that vote on September 3, 2020.
Boring was platted in 1903 as Boring Junction and takes its name from the family of William Harrison Boring, a Union veteran; since 2012 it has been paired with Dull, Scotland, and since 2013 with Bland, Australia.
The Springwater Corridor rail trail starts in Boring and ends at the Eastbank Esplanade in downtown Portland. The Boring Lava Field, with about 80 vents spread across the area, takes its name from the community.
Metro added the Damascus area to the urban growth boundary in December 2002 and later ballot measures blocked the urbanization; in 2020 about a fifth of Damascus residents were still counted as rural, and Boring has more than thirty working nurseries.
Yes, Damascus and Boring are in our area across all five ZIP codes, 97009, 97015, 97030, 97080 and 97089, acreage and subdivision alike. The posted price is the same as in Happy Valley, and it does not climb with the length of the driveway. If the drive is gravel and steep, say so, and we will plan the truck and ladders around it.
Often enough to keep buildup under an eighth of an inch, which on a stove running daily can mean more than once a winter. Check it yourself with a flashlight at the cleanout tee once a month with the stove cold; flaky soot is fine, crunchy black flakes mean book us, and anything shiny means stop burning until we have been. Dry wood and a hot morning burn stretch the interval more than anything else.
Yes, that is glazed creosote, the third-degree kind, and it is the fuel of most chimney fires, so stop burning until it has been removed. It forms when wet wood burns slowly with the air shut down, which is exactly how a stove gets run overnight in January. Removal takes rotary tools or a chemical treatment rather than a brush, and afterward the fix is drier wood, hotter burns and a shorter interval between sweeps.
Yes, both. Oregon's home-sale law covers every used wood stove and insert on the property, in a residence, workshop, outbuilding or any other structure, and any without a DEQ or EPA label must be removed and destroyed, then reported to DEQ with the disposal receipt. The seller handles it before closing unless both sides agree in writing that the buyer will, within 30 days after closing. Pellet stoves, open fireplaces and ornate antique stoves built before 1940 are exempt.
Fir split and stacked under cover wants at least six months, and the real test is a moisture meter reading under 20 percent. Green wood burns cool and smoky, and that smoke condenses into creosote in the pipe, which is how a stove that is swept every fall still glazes by February. Split it small, stack it off the ground, top-cover it and leave the sides open. Our firewood guide goes deeper.
Yes; our research found no Clackamas County rule that turns a DEQ advisory into an order, and sole-source wood heat is a case Oregon's curtailment statute exempts anyway. What you can do on those days is burn hotter and cleaner: dry wood, a full air setting, fewer smoldering overnight loads, which cuts the smoke that the advisory is about. Our wood burning guide covers the county rules and the exemptions.
Get everyone out of the house and call 911 first, before anything else. Do not go back in to close the stove air or the damper until the fire department says the house is clear. Afterward the chimney needs a Level 2 camera inspection before another fire, because a chimney fire cracks tile and warps pipe in places you cannot see from the stove, and we document the damage in writing.
Happy Valley and Clackamas sit downhill to the west, Gresham to the north, Oregon City to the south and Sandy up US 26, all on the same run.
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.