Chimney sweep near you
Yes, Irvington is on our route, and its multi-flue brick chimneys, from the 1890s houses near NE Broadway to the period revival homes toward Fremont, set the work here. A visit to one starts with a camera run through each flue in the stack.
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Irvington's houses went up between 1891 and 1948 on a grid from NE 7th to NE 26th and Broadway to Fremont, platted in 1887 as a residential district with commercial activity kept out.
The early houses are large and often sit on oversized lots, so one brick stack was built to serve a living room fireplace, a second fireplace and the basement's coal or oil furnace, each with its own flue. Irvington's early flues went in before clay tile liners were standard, and a century of smoke, rain and settling has worn the mortar between them.
The later Craftsman and period revival houses carry chimneys with decorative brickwork above the roof, and the apartment courts near NE Broadway, Irvington Court and Thompson Court among them, were heated by boilers with their own stacks. About 45 percent of households rented in 2010 and some of the large houses have been split into units, so many chimneys here answer to a landlord.
One Irvington chimney can hold three flues: the main fireplace, a second fireplace and the original coal or oil furnace, stacked side by side in brick that went up before clay tile liners were standard.
What fails here is the thin brick wall between flues, called the wythe, and the top. Decades of smoke and condensate ate at the mortar, so a camera run can find open joints that let one flue breathe into the next, and the decorative tops of the period revival chimneys shed their crowns and let rain into all three flues at once.
Big houses with several flues shape the Irvington call list, and every job on it has to account for the flue next door as well as the one being worked on.
A Level 2 camera inspection on an Irvington house changing hands runs every flue in the stack, not just the one behind the living room fireplace, because the second fireplace and the old furnace flue share the same brick and the same open joints. The report carries the images from each flue so the buyer and the seller see what we saw.
A correctly sized stainless liner turns an unlined 1900s flue into a continuous passage, and in a three-flue Irvington stack we often line the fireplace you use and close the ones you do not. A lone water heater on the old furnace flue gets its own correctly sized liner so that flue stops condensing.
The decorative brick tops on the period revival houses lose their mortar first, and repointing them means matching the joint profile and the brick color so the repair disappears from the street. In the Irvington Historic District, work that changes how a chimney looks from the sidewalk may need the city's historic resource review, and we tell you before we quote if your job might.
An Irvington sweep covers the fireplace flue you burn in and, while the brushes are out, a look down the other flues in the stack for debris, nests and fallen mortar. With two fireplaces in the house we sweep both in one visit, and each gets the Level 1 once-over.
A multi-flue stack takes either one cap per flue or a single custom cap over the whole top, and the choice depends on the crown and how the flues are spaced. Either way, an open flue above an Irvington house is a rain funnel for a tall brick stack, and a cap is the simplest thing we install.
We come into Irvington from I-84 by way of NE 15th or NE 21st, or down NE Martin Luther King Jr Blvd from I-5, then across on Broadway, Weidler or Fremont depending on which end of the grid you are on.
The lots are wide, so what we plan for is the chimney height more than the parking. Tell us when you book how many stories the house has and whether the stack rises from the ridge or an outside wall, and mention if a tenant will be the one letting us in.
The Irvington Addition was platted in 1887 and kept commercial activity out by design, and the shops sit along NE Broadway at the southern edge rather than inside the grid.
The 583-acre Irvington Historic District joined the National Register of Historic Places on October 22, 2010, and the city also lists it among its designated Historic Districts.
The Robert F. Lytle House is known to neighbors as the Portland White House.
The Irvington Community Association pays for its work with a spring tour of homes that draws a crowd every year.
Residents orient by the Irvington Tennis Club, Westminster Presbyterian Church and the NE Broadway shops, and the neighborhood runs from NE 7th to NE 26th between Broadway and Fremont.
Yes, all of Irvington from NE 7th to NE 26th and Broadway to Fremont is inside the territory we cover, and 97212 is one of our regular ZIPs. The apartment courts near Broadway are boiler buildings, so the work there is usually dryer vents and ducts rather than fireplaces, and property managers book those like any other job: posted price, and the drive costs nothing extra once the work goes ahead.
Within the week in most months, and a multi-flue inspection takes one visit, not three. The fall rush starts with the first cold week in October and runs through Thanksgiving across inner Northeast, so an Irvington house that wants every flue on camera before burning season should get on the calendar in late summer, while there is room in the schedule and the roofs are dry.
Each fireplace has its own flue, and each flue gets swept, but we do both in one visit. The brushes change size if the flues differ, the vacuum runs the whole time, and you get photos from inside both. If one of them has sat unlit for years, we camera it before sweeping, because an unused flue in an unlined stack can hide a fallen brick or an open joint.
It can, when the work changes what the chimney looks like from the street. Irvington is a city-designated Historic District as well as a National Register district, so a rebuild above the roofline on a contributing house may go through historic resource review before it starts. We tell you at the quote stage whether your job looks like one of those, and we match brick and joint profile either way so the repair reads as original.
No fire that day, unless your household has one of the county's exemptions. A red day starts at noon and ends at noon the next day, and it covers open fireplaces, both kinds of stove and outdoor fire pits; a yellow day is a voluntary ask. A restriction can land in any month; it tracks the air forecast, not the season. Our metro wood burning rules guide lists the exemptions and where to check the color.
It needs attention, because an Irvington furnace flue left without its furnace starts to fail from the inside. Serving nothing but a water heater, it runs cold and condenses, and the acid in that condensate dissolves mortar from the inside; left with nothing, it pulls damp air through the brick. We either line it to the water heater or seal it off top and bottom. The orphaned chimney guide explains both.
Begin with our contractor-check guide, which covers the state's public lookup without a sales pitch. Then ask whoever answers the phone whether the camera footage from your own flues is part of the deal and whether the number was posted before the truck rolled. On an Irvington stack with three flues and a century of mortar, those answers matter more than any slogan.
From the Irvington grid the same truck works the neighborhoods on every side, up the ridge to Alameda and east toward Hollywood.
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.