Genesee, King County
Genesee is a hill neighborhood on the western side of West Seattle, and its chimneys have a particular history to answer for. Families crowded onto the hill in the 1940s, the ground falls away steeply toward the water on its western edge, and the peninsula as a whole has shaken hard in three earthquakes since 1949. This page gathers what public records say on each point, names the record, and explains what we do differently because of it when we work on a chimney in Genesee.
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$99 plus tax, deducted when you approve the repair
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Pick what you're seeing at your Genesee home — we'll point you to the right fix.
What we do
The same crew, the same written quote — for Genesee homes.
Full-height brushing of the flue with a head sized to its shape and material
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Level 1 examination of everything reachable, with a Level 2 camera pass when the reachable parts leave a question open
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Camera survey and measurement of the existing flue before anything is ordered
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Assessment of the stack from roofline to crown, with a photo of each defect
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Measurement of each flue tile, or of the whole crown for a multi-flue cap
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Joints cut back to firm mortar and repointed (tuckpointing) to match the existing profile
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A check of joints, crown and flashing first; defects are repaired before any treatment
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Leak tracing from the attic or the ceiling stain up to the roof
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Burner, pilot assembly and firebox cleaned; logs or media put back in the layout the manual shows
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Camera survey to grade the deposit and check the liner beneath it
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Dryer pulled out; the transition duct inspected, and replaced if it is plastic, thin foil or crushed
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Inspection of the furnace, the plenum and a sample of ducts before any work, with photos
Learn moreRanges shown for orientation — the exact figure is written up on-site, after the inspection.
Service-area map — Genesee, Seattle. Map data © OpenStreetMap contributors.
Wikipedia draws Genesee's limits at SW Genesee Street to the south and SW Charlestown Street to the north, between 46th and 56th Avenues SW, and places Ercolini Park and the rebuilt Genesee Hill Elementary inside them. The landmark nomination prepared in 2022 for Alki Elementary puts Genesee and North Admiral directly east of Alki. Census housing figures do not exist at this scale; the ones below come from a ZIP code area that Genesee shares with Alki, Admiral and the north part of Seaview, so they describe the surroundings rather than any one street.
The district was planning ahead long before the houses came. HistoryLink records that Seattle Public Schools bought land in the Dover Addition in 1928 for what it then called Dover School. Nothing was built for twenty years. In January 1945 parents on the hill asked for a school of their own because Jefferson, Lafayette and Alki were overcrowded, the board approved a semi-permanent, expandable building in November 1947, and a four-room school was under construction by June 1948.
Genesee Hill School, designed by George W. Stoddard, opened on January 31, 1949. A ten-room addition followed that same September, and enrollment reached its highest point, 726 pupils, in 1958-59. The building closed in June 1989, served an alternative program for a time, came down in 2014 and was replaced by a new K-5 school that opened in fall 2016.
Not every lot filled with houses. Seattle Parks says Ercolini Park, at 4542 48th Avenue SW, takes its name from Joe and Julia Ercolini, who grew produce on the site and sold it for several decades starting in the 1930s. Northward, the 2022 nomination describes Schmitz Park's western end, some 11.4 acres, coming within half a block of Alki Elementary, and small house lots climbing toward SW Admiral Way in the gap.
In the shared ZIP code area, Census estimates for 2020-2024 count 15,073 housing units. About 23.1 percent predate 1940, 16.2 percent date from 1940-1959, and 18.3 percent have gone up since 2010, which brings the median year built to 1974. Only 39.5 percent of units are detached houses, a sign of how many apartments and townhouses sit alongside the older homes.
That spread is the reason we never guess at a Genesee chimney from the street. A hearth of the school-building years and a gas unit vented through the wall of a recent townhouse need different work, and no record lists which address has which. The inspection settles it.
The pressure that produced Genesee Hill School in 1949 came from new households. HistoryLink's essay on West Seattle notes that thousands of defense workers arrived for the Harbor Island plants during World War II, and that the peninsula's population had doubled to more than 70,000 by the war's end. Some of that growth landed here, as the 1945 petition for a school shows.
A house built in that wave may still have its first fireplace and clay-tile flue. Over seventy-odd years, many such fireplaces have been fitted with inserts, changed to gas, or closed off. Seattle's mechanical code now requires an insert to carry a UL 1482 label and to be installed by its maker's instructions, and in practice that points to a liner of the insert's own collar size, not the old, oversized flue. If the house has changed owners several times, the insert may have gone in before anyone checked that.
Down the slope, at 4430 Beach Drive SW, lies Me-Kwa-Mooks Park, where Ferdinand and Emma Schmitz once homesteaded; Seattle Parks says the bulk of it is still a largely untouched wooded hillside above the road. Just south, at the Emma Schmitz Memorial Overlook, a seawall from the 1920s, worn down by storms and erosion, was rebuilt by the Army Corps of Engineers over 2020 and 2021. The Seattle Landslide Study adds 18 slides since 1933 along SW Jacobsen Road, on a slope facing west, and severe damage to two houses when the ground moved in early 1997.
The study also finds more recorded slides in West Seattle than anywhere else in the city, concentrated on the edges of steep hills. For chimney owners on the west-facing edge of Genesee, that has two consequences. A chimney is stiff and cannot bend with the house, so it is often the first place slow ground movement shows, as a gap at the wall or a lean at the top. And the downhill side of such a lot usually means a taller stack and harder roof access, which we plan for before quoting.
Genesee Hill School was only weeks old when the earthquake of April 13, 1949 struck. Lafayette School, nearby in Admiral, was ruined, and HistoryLink records that its first- through fourth-graders spent the 1949-50 year at the new Genesee building. That magnitude 7.1 shock, by HistoryLink's account, sent about 10,000 chimneys in western Washington to the mason.
It was not the last time. When the ground shook again in April 1965, surveyors walked 188 West Seattle blocks: of 5,005 chimneys they found 1,712 damaged. After the Nisqually earthquake of 2001, a block-by-block USGS-published study of some 60,000 chimneys found the damage strongly clustered, with West Seattle the worst-hit area, as it had been in 1965. None of these records identifies individual Genesee streets. What they establish is that an older unreinforced brick chimney anywhere on this peninsula should be looked at after a felt earthquake, from the top down, before the next fire.
The grid we quote from for Genesee homes — the $99 inspection comes first, the written quote before any work.
| Service | Price in Genesee | What that covers |
|---|---|---|
| Chimney Sweep | $189–$449 | Full flue swept, Level 1 inspection included |
| Chimney Inspection | $99 plus tax | Level 1 visual; Level 2 adds a full camera scan |
| Chimney Relining | From $1,900 | Full-length stainless liner, sized to the appliance |
| Chimney Repair | From $425 | Masonry repair — brick and mortar, scoped after diagnosis |
| Chimney Cap Installation | $235–$850 | Stainless cap fitted; multi-flue and custom at the top |
| Masonry Repair (Crown / Repointing) | From $475 | Crown work, repointing and tuckpointing by surface area |
| Chimney Waterproofing | $320–$795 | Breathable sealer — reapplied every 3–5 years in this climate |
| Chimney Flashing Repair | $375–$1,500 | Reseal at the low end, full flashing replacement at the high |
| Gas Fireplace Service | $189–$475 | Annual service and tune-up; repairs quoted after diagnosis |
| Creosote Removal | From $245 | Priced by creosote stage — glazed stage 3 is the heavy end |
| Dryer Vent Cleaning | $105–$295 | Full run cleaned; roof or upper-floor terminations at the top |
| Air Duct Cleaning | From $535 | Whole HVAC system — trunks, branches and every register |
Ranges are what these jobs are quoted at in Genesee. The exact figure is set on site after a $99 inspection (credited toward the job if you go ahead), and you approve it before any work starts.
Before and after
Illustrations of what each repair changes on a typical chimney — not photos of a specific job.
Before
After
Before
After
Before
After
Four steps, each one on paper — so you always know what happens next.
Choose a genuine opening on the crew's calendar. Confirmation is immediate.
Liner, crown, cap, flashing and masonry examined in order — each finding photographed.
One document, plain numbers, covering only the work your chimney genuinely needs.
The repair is completed, then handed over with before-and-after photos of every item.
$99 plus tax for each chimney. It includes a camera pass through the flue, a look at the top and the firebox, and a written report. If you accept a quote from us afterward, the $99 is deducted from that job; otherwise it is not returned.
Age alone does not decide it. A 1940s flue can be sound and a recent one can be damaged. We decide from the camera footage, and we show it to you.
Sometimes. Where the yard drops behind the house, the stack may rise a full floor above what the front sidewalk suggests. We check access at the inspection so the quote already includes it.
Repointing a chimney is on the exemption list in section R105.2 of the city's residential code, so long as the house envelope stays as it is. Anything bigger, such as a rebuild, goes to SDCI as a question about your specific address before a date is set.
Choose a genuine opening on the crew's calendar. We inspect, quote in writing, and hand over a photo record of every repair.
