Chimney sweeping, inspection, and repair for Issaquah homes

Sweeping, inspection, masonry and crown repair, cap and chase-cover fitting, flashing and leak work, relining, waterproofing, and rebuild or restoration are all available here. Which one you need is a question the inspection answers, not the phone call.

1. 1

   Tell us the symptom

   A smell, smoke pushing into the room, a ceiling stain, moss on the crown, rust streaks down the siding of a chase.

2. 2

   We look before we quote

   The inspection covers the readily accessible chimney, the connector, and the appliance, and it sets the scope.

3. 3

   You approve, then work starts

   Photographs from matching angles where practical, a written price, and nothing done until you say yes.

Chimney advice written for Puget Sound assumes a brick stack on a pre-war house. In Issaquah that assumption is wrong more often than it is right.

Masonry chimney

Brick or block with a liner inside, usually clay tile. Concentrated in Olde Town and in homes predating the 1990s build-out.

Factory-built chimney

A listed metal firebox and flue boxed into a framed chase finished in siding. Standard here from the late 1990s on, and it still needs sweeping and annual inspection.

Crown

The sloped masonry slab on a brick chimney. Its job is throwing runoff clear of the brick, so the overhang matters more than the surface.

Chase cover

The sheet-metal lid doing the crown's job on a chase. Thin covers pond water, rust through at the low point, and drip into the framing before anything shows indoors.

• Debris on top. Needle litter and moss hold water on a crown or chase cover, and pack a spark arrestor screen until the flue stops drawing.
• Freeze-thaw on higher ground. Brick that soaks, freezes overnight, and thaws by day loses its faces. Masonry that will be wet and freezing is meant to be severe-weathering grade.
• Wind on exposed lots. Heavy wind-driven rain penetrates a single wythe of brickwork whatever the workmanship, and ridge lots take far more of it than the valley floor.

Permits at an Issaquah address run through the City of Issaquah Permit Center, part of Community Planning and Development, and applications are filed on the MyBuildingPermit.com portal. The city states the requirement broadly: a permit is required of anyone intending to construct, enlarge, alter, repair, move, demolish, or change the occupancy of a building or structure.

• Masonry or factory-built. A rusted chase cover and a spalling brick crown are different trades with different materials.
• Access and roof pitch. Hillside lots in Talus, around Montreux, and on the Squak Mountain slopes bring steep driveways and tall downhill elevations.
• How far the water got. A cracked crown can be resurfaced; one left until the liner and framing are wet becomes a rebuild.
• Matching older material. Repointing in Olde Town means matching mortar strength, color, and joint profile to what is already in the wall.
• Season. Repointing wants wall temperatures between 40 and 95 degrees Fahrenheit, which rules out much of a Puget Sound winter.

• Annual sweep and inspection. The baseline for anyone burning wood, and the visit that catches a rusting chase cover early.
• Leak and flashing repair. For a ceiling stain, a damp firebox, or rust streaks down a chase.
• Crown repair and cap installation. For open flues, missing caps, and crowns that have cracked or lost their overhang.
• Masonry repair and waterproofing. For eroded joints and spalling faces, once the water source above is corrected.

The same crews cover the rest of the Eastside — Bellevue, Redmond, and Renton — so the process does not change from one address to the next.