Chimney sweep near you
Hillsdale is hill country, and we work it that way, with long ladders for chimneys that climb two stories off the downhill end of a daylight-basement house. Sweeps, crown and moss work, and liners for the 1920s to 1940s brick are the usual calls.
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Hillsdale's homes are 1920s to 1940s houses set into the slope and 1950s and 1960s ranches with daylight basements, on hill streets climbing from the Capitol Hwy town center between SW Sunset Blvd and SW Bertha Blvd.
The prewar houses carry brick chimneys built for a fireplace and an oil furnace, most with clay tile liners but not all, so a 1930s Hillsdale flue is a camera question until someone has looked. The postwar ranches and daylight-basement houses usually have one tile-lined masonry fireplace, and on a sloped lot that fireplace tends to sit on the downhill end, where the chimney rises two stories from the ground.
Tree cover is the other constant. The trees that make the hill streets pleasant also keep roofs and brick damp long after the rain stops, so moss on the shaded face of a chimney, a crown holding water and spalled brick on the weather side are common finds. The apartments near the town center mostly have no fireplace, and the call there is a dryer vent.
Many Hillsdale chimneys are tall ones: brick stacks on the prewar houses with a fireplace flue and an oil-furnace flue side by side, and tile-lined single fireplaces on the ranches, often set on the downhill end where the ground falls away.
Height changes what fails. A two-story stack has more face in the weather, more joints to open and a crown nobody can see from the yard, so water gets in long before a stain shows inside. The shaded face grows moss that holds water against the brick. In the prewar houses, an oil-furnace flue left behind by a gas conversion sits cold and damp and sheds mortar from the inside.
Hillsdale's calls come from height, shade and the oil-to-gas switch.
A crown two stories up on the downhill end of a Hillsdale ranch cracks, holds a puddle and feeds water into the brick for years before anyone notices, because nobody sees it without a ladder. We rebuild the crown with an overhang and a slope, seal the flue-to-crown joint and often find the top courses need repointing while we are there.
Shaded brick under the Hillsdale trees stays wet and grows moss, and moss holds water against the face through every freeze. We kill and clear the moss, let the brick dry, make the masonry sound and then apply a breathable repellent that lets the wall exhale, which is the order our moss guide lays out and the opposite of painting a sealer over a damp chimney.
A Level 2 camera run is how we answer the two Hillsdale questions that matter most: does the 1930s flue actually have tile, and has the tall ranch chimney cracked where it meets the roof. We also run it on any house changing owners, because the standard recommends a Level 2 when a house sells and a tall stack's downhill face deserves more than a guess from the lawn.
Prewar Hillsdale flues that turn out to be bare brick, and oil-furnace flues now serving only a water heater, both come back into service with a stainless liner matched to the appliance. On a two-flue stack we usually line the fireplace side and either line or retire the furnace side on the same visit, so the ladder goes up once.
A tile-lined ranch fireplace that burns through a Hillsdale winter needs its yearly sweep, and the Level 1 look-over we do with it is where the rusted damper, the loose firebrick and the missing cap get found. Book it in late summer, ahead of the fall rush, so the first cold night finds the flue already clean.
Hillsdale sits on OR 10, the Beaverton-Hillsdale Hwy, so we come in along it from either direction, or up SW Capitol Hwy from I-5.
SW Sunset Blvd, SW Bertha Blvd, SW Vermont St and SW Dosch Rd carry us from the town center onto the hill streets. Let us know when you book whether the house sits below the road or above it and which side the chimney is on, so we park where the long ladder can come straight off.
McMenamins Hillsdale Brewery opened in 1985 as Oregon's first brewpub, and the Hillsdale Farmers Market runs Sundays in summer and every other Sunday in winter.
The rebuilt Hillsdale Library reopened on March 4, 2004, as Portland's first LEED building, rated Gold.
Ida B. Wells-Barnett High School and Rieke Elementary sit side by side, and about 65 percent of Hillsdale households owned their homes in 2020.
Oregon Route 10 ties Hillsdale to downtown Portland one way and to Raleigh Hills and Beaverton the other.
Its neighbors, Southwest Hills, Healy Heights and Homestead to the north and Hayhurst and Bridlemile to the west, are all hill country too.
Yes, all of Hillsdale is in our service area, whichever ZIP code your street falls in. That runs from the town center on Capitol Hwy up to the streets bordering Southwest Hills and west toward Bridlemile. A tall chimney on a steep lot is priced from the same board as a flat one, and when we do the work the drive out is on us.
Yes, that is a familiar Hillsdale chimney and we plan for it. We carry ladders for a two-story exterior stack, tie off on the roof, and when the downhill face is beyond safe ladder reach we inspect it with the camera from the flue and a pole camera from the roof edge rather than guessing. Sweeping itself is done from the top or from the firebox, whichever the chimney allows.
Green is moss and flaking is spalling, and the first causes the second. Moss holds water on the brick, the water freezes on the 32 or so freezing nights a Portland winter brings, and the face of the brick pops off; under Hillsdale's tree cover the shaded faces rarely dry fully. The repair is to clear the moss, replace the spalled brick, repoint and then apply a breathable repellent, in that order.
Yes, get it checked: a furnace flue that lost its furnace to a gas conversion is the quiet failure in prewar Hillsdale houses. If a water heater still vents into it, the flue is too big for that appliance, runs cold and condenses, and acid eats the tile and mortar; if nothing uses it, it is an open path for cold air and rain. The answer is a liner sized to the heater, or a flue sealed and retired.
No, Hillsdale falls under the same Multnomah County restriction as the rest of the county, with no neighborhood rule we know of on top. A red day shuts down wood and pellet burning from noon to noon; a yellow day asks only that you consider limiting burning. Exemptions, such as for households that heat only with wood or meet the income test, come from the county and expire each September 30. Our county-by-county guide keeps the details current.
It means a Level 2 chimney inspection with a camera, the level the inspection standard recommends at a sale or transfer of the property. A general home inspection usually stops at the firebox and the roofline; the camera looks at the flue tile, the smoke chamber and the joints a tall stack hides. You get the images and a written report, and if the house has an uncertified wood insert, we flag Oregon's home-sale removal rule.
Begin with the Oregon contractor lookup, which confirms who you are dealing with; our contractor-check guide walks through it. Then ask whether the price is posted before the visit and whether the inspection report will include the camera images from your flue. On a Hillsdale roof two stories above a sloping yard, you also want to hear how they tie off before you hear anything about price.
From Hillsdale the same crew works Multnomah Village, the Southwest Hills, Bridlemile and Raleigh Hills, and drops east across the Sellwood Bridge to Sellwood-Moreland.
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.