Chimney sweep near you
Gresham is in our service area, from the old blocks around Main City Park to the 1970s and 1980s tracts and the butte slopes. The east wind sets the work: caps gone, rain driven into windward brick, and ice-storm damage to flashing and crowns.
Updated
About four in ten Gresham homes went up in a 1970s and 1980s ring of subdivisions around a small old core, the farm town of 365 people that incorporated in 1905.
Gresham's 1970s and 1980s tracts were built in the decades when builders were moving from masonry fireplaces to factory-built metal units, so a Gresham house from 1978 may have a brick chimney with a clay tile liner or a metal flue in a sided chase, and an original chase cover on one of the metal ones is now forty to fifty years old.
The old core is different. The Historic Southeast neighborhood and the blocks around Main City Park and the 1913 Carnegie Library hold houses from around 1900, the Queen Anne style William Gedamke House among them, many with brick chimneys built without liners, and the slopes of Gresham Butte and the other volcanic buttes add tall chimneys on sloped lots to the mix.
Gresham's chimneys split by era: often unlined brick stacks on the century-old houses of the core, tile-lined masonry or factory-built metal in chases across the 1970s and 1980s ring, and a mix of metal and gas vents in the newer tracts.
Several times each winter, high pressure east of the Cascades pairs with low pressure off the coast and the east wind pours out of the Gorge toward Troutdale, Fairview and Gresham. It lifts caps and rain covers, drives rain into the windward face of brick, and when freezing rain rides it, as in January 2024, it brings down limbs that can crack flashing and crowns.
Wind, ice and forty-year-old sheet metal: the Gresham calls in one line.
After an east wind event, Gresham calls often start with a cap in the yard or a rain cover hanging by one screw, and a flue open to the sky until someone goes up. We fit caps meant for this corridor, stainless, bolted into sound masonry or clamped to the flue pipe, with a lid that does not act like a sail, and on multi-flue stacks a single cover anchored at all four corners.
Wind-driven rain gets under flashing that a straight-down rain never tests, so a Gresham leak often appears only on east wind days and only on the east side of the chimney. We lift and reset the step and counter flashing, add a cricket on the uphill side of a wide chimney where there was none, and seal the crown-to-flue joint that the same wind opens.
Before a sale, or before the first fire in years, a 1970s or 1980s Gresham house with a factory-built fireplace needs the camera: the chase cover may be near the end of its life, the flue pipe may have rusted where that cover leaked, and the refractory panels can crack with age. On the century-old houses in the core the Level 2 inspection answers whether the brick flue ever had tile at all.
Freezing rain on the east wind fills every hairline crack in a crown and then expands, and by spring the Gresham crown that was merely crazed can be split through and feeding water into the top courses. We rebuild it with a proper slope and overhang, replace spalled brick on the windward face and finish the stack with a breathable water repellent, which beats patching the same crack every year.
A masonry fireplace in one of the 1970s tracts off Powell or Division gets a yearly sweep with the Level 1 look-over, and in Gresham the look-over always includes the cap and the windward brick because that is where storms leave their mark. On the old houses near Main City Park we sweep the fireplace flue and camera the rest on the same visit.
Gresham is an I-84 run from the north side of the city or a US 26 run along Powell Boulevard from the south, and Burnside Road, Division Street and Stark Street carry us across town from there.
181st Avenue gets us north and south between the tracts. On the butte slopes chimneys can run taller, so tell us which side of the house the chimney is on, and after a wind night mention whether anything came off the roof so we bring a cap.
Brothers Jackson and James Powell settled the area in 1851 and called it Powell's Valley; the town took Walter Q. Gresham's name in 1884 after a post office dispute and incorporated on February 11, 1905, with 365 residents.
Berries, grapes and vegetables drove the local economy from the 1910s to the 1960s, and the 1913 Gresham Carnegie Library is a recognized historic site.
The William Gedamke House, a Queen Anne style home built about 1900, was listed on the National Register in 1989.
Gresham's neighborhoods include Rockwood, Gresham Butte, Hogan Cedars, Kelly Creek, Pleasant Valley, Powell Valley and Historic Southeast, and residents give directions by Main City Park, Mount Hood Community College, the Springwater Corridor and Hogan Butte Nature Park.
A National Weather Service wind advisory on January 16, 2026, put the strongest gusts along the I-84 corridor through Troutdale, Fairview and Gresham, the corridor where the east wind lands first.
Yes, the whole city is in our service area, Rockwood to Pleasant Valley and the Historic Southeast to the butte slopes, in all three ZIP codes. Gresham is priced from the same posted board as Portland, and the drive out I-84 or Powell is not a separate line on the bill when we do the work.
Same week in most cases, sooner when another wind event is in the forecast, because an open flue in a Gorge wind invites rain and birds. Close the damper until we arrive. If the old cap is in the yard, keep it; the size and the way it failed tell us whether to bolt the new one into the masonry or clamp it to the flue pipe.
A prefab sweep is a brush sized to the metal pipe, run from the firebox with the hearth sealed and the vacuum on, and the firebox cleaned after. Then comes the Level 1 look-over: panels, damper, spark screen and, from the roof, the chase cover and the cap, which in Gresham is where the wind has often been at work. You leave with photos of the pipe interior and the top of the chase.
Because a Gorge east wind can push down a flue harder than a fresh fire can push up it. An uncapped flue, or one that ends low against a taller roofline, feels it first. Leave it unlit until we have been out, since the same symptom also comes from a blocked flue or a failing smoke chamber; common Gresham fixes are a wind-resistant cap, a flue extension to clear the roofline, or a top-sealing damper.
Yes, Gresham is in Multnomah County and the county's restriction applies inside the city like everywhere else in the county. Check the county's wood smoke status page; the color is posted by late morning and a red day covers noon to noon the following day. On red, wood and pellet stoves, fireplaces, fire pits and chimineas all stay cold unless your household has a county exemption, and our wood burning rules guide walks through how those work.
A wood insert that carries no DEQ or EPA label is covered by Oregon's home-sale law and must be removed and destroyed. Normally the seller does that before closing, though a written agreement can hand the job to the buyer for 30 days after, and pellet stoves and open fireplaces are exempt. For the chimney, the standard recommends Level 2 at a sale, and a 1970s Gresham chase is where the camera earns its keep.
Do it now, in a calm week, starting with the state's contractor lookup, which our contractor-check guide walks through. Then ask two things that matter in this corridor: is the price posted before anyone comes out, and will the report include photos from the roof and inside the flue. A company that will show you your own cap, crown and pipe is one you can call again the morning after the wind.
The same east-county truck covers Troutdale, Fairview and Wood Village on the I-84 side, Happy Valley and the Damascus country to the south, Sandy out US 26, and East Portland on the way back in.
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.