Chimney sweep near you
Sherwood is on our route, and the work there is a camera inspection and liner for Old Town brick from the 1889 plat, or a sweep, chase check or gas vent service on a fireplace from the 1990s boom.
Updated
Sherwood has two chimney types with little between. The Old Town platted in 1889 and its nearby streets hold the pre-1940 houses, and most of the rest went up after 1990, when the city grew from about 3,000 people to 18,000 in twenty years.
An Old Town chimney of that age was commonly built of brick with no liner, with one flue serving both a wood stove and the furnace, and a century of Tualatin Valley rain has worked on every joint. Those are the flues that need a camera run and usually a liner before anyone lights a fire in them again.
The subdivisions that made Sherwood Oregon's fastest-growing city in the early 2000s were commonly built with factory-built metal fireplaces in framed chases or with direct-vent gas units, and wood burning thins out in the newest phases. On the acreage toward the Tualatin River refuge and Chehalem Mountain, the calls include freestanding wood stoves, which are a different sweep.
Old Town Sherwood brick is commonly the unlined kind: a single flue that once took a stove and a furnace together, no clay tile, and mortar that has had more than a hundred wet winters to soften.
The post-1990 houses commonly have a metal firebox inside a framed chase or a sealed gas unit vented through the wall, which fail at the chase cover, the cap screen, the refractory panels and the gas vent seals. A freestanding wood stove on an acre lot adds a connector pipe and a thimble to the list, and the stove's DEQ or EPA label decides what happens when the property sells.
Sherwood's calls divide at the city line and the year 1990: brick and liners in Old Town, chase and gas work in the subdivisions, stoves on the acreage.
An Old Town house from the town's early decades that wants its fireplace or stove back in service gets a stainless liner matched to that appliance, run the full height of the brick and insulated when the flue's size and position call for it, so the smoke no longer touches the old mortar. The camera run comes first and decides whether the brick can carry a liner at all.
A buyer of a 1990s Sherwood house often has no idea whether the fireplace is a factory-built wood unit or a gas insert dropped into one. A Level 2 camera inspection before closing settles the type, the condition of the panels and pipe, and whether an older insert carries a DEQ or EPA label, which decides whether Oregon's home-sale law requires its removal.
Out toward the wildlife refuge and Chehalem Mountain, a wood stove on acreage can run most of the winter, and a stove that burns every day builds creosote in the connector pipe and the chimney faster than a weekend fireplace does. We sweep the flue, pull and clean the baffle, check the connector and the thimble, and look at the gasket on the door.
Many 1990s and 2000s subdivision houses were built with wood-burning factory-built fireplaces, and the ones still used for wood get a yearly sweep of the metal pipe with the right size brush, a check of the refractory panels and the damper, and a look at the cap screen, which clogs with creosote and chokes the draft long before the flue itself is dirty.
Two-story houses from the boom years often put the laundry upstairs, and a dryer vent that runs down through the wall and across to the hood is a lint trap waiting for a hot afternoon. We clean it end to end, make sure the hood flap opens, and tell you if the run is foil that should be metal.
Pacific Highway brings us to Sherwood from Tigard and King City, and Tualatin-Sherwood Road is the way in from I-5 and Tualatin; Roy Rogers Road reaches the subdivisions along it.
Old Town's nine blocks are tight and the houses sit close to the street, so a ladder sometimes goes up from a neighbor's side yard; tell us if the chimney is on the alley side. Out on the acreage, say how long the driveway is and whether the stove's chimney comes through the roof or runs up an outside wall, because it changes the ladder and the brush we bring.
Sherwood was first called Smockville after founder James Christopher Smock and took its present name in 1891. The railroad arrived in 1889, the same year the town was platted, and Sherwood incorporated in 1893.
Sherwood's city limits grew from one square mile in 1911 to about four and a half square miles today. Sherwood was Oregon's fastest-growing city in the early 2000s, until the housing slowdown of 2006 and 2007.
The city's motto calls Sherwood the home of the Tualatin River National Wildlife Refuge, and residents give directions by Old Town, the refuge, Sherwood High School and the public library.
Yes, Sherwood and the unincorporated 97140 acreage around it toward the refuge and Chehalem Mountain are inside the territory we cover. The sweep, the stove sweep and the camera inspection each have a posted price, and the trip out is folded into the job. A long gravel driveway is fine; just tell us about it when you book so we plan for it.
Keep it cold until a camera has gone down the flue. An Old Town chimney from the years after the 1889 plat was commonly built without a liner, often with one flue for a stove and a furnace together, and after a century the mortar between those bricks is the only thing between the smoke and the framing. A Level 2 inspection shows what is there, and a stainless liner is the usual route back to a working fireplace.
Inside the city limits, no. The county's program covers unincorporated land plus Hillsboro and Cornelius, and no Sherwood ordinance turned up in our research, so DEQ advisories are the guidance in town. An unincorporated address just outside the line is under the county program November 1 through March 1, when a red day stops fireplace and wood stove use unless the household is exempt. The way the color gets posted is covered in our wood burning rules guide.
Plan on a yearly sweep, and a stove burning daily from October to April may need a midwinter sweep too. The first sweep tells us whether yours does. The national chimney standard sets a yearly inspection as the floor; how much creosote a Sherwood stove makes depends on the wood's moisture, how far down you close the air at night and how cold the chimney runs. Dry wood under 20 percent moisture is most of the answer.
It is overdue rather than dangerous on its face, but book the vent inspection and service before the next season. A direct-vent gas unit from the 2000s boom collects a white film on the glass, dust in the burner and corrosion at the vent termination, and the gaskets that keep exhaust outside dry out with age. We inspect the vent run and cap, clean the burner and glass, test the ignition and reset the logs.
Check before you call anyone; our guide to looking up an Oregon contractor covers the state's public search step by step, with no sales pitch. Then ask whoever you book two things: is the price posted ahead of the visit, and do the photos from inside my own flue come with the job. On an Old Town Sherwood chimney the photos are the whole point, because nothing about an unlined flue is visible from the hearth.
Sherwood is the far southwest stop on the Washington County route, which runs back up Pacific Highway through King City and Tigard and over to Tualatin and Wilsonville.
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.