Alki, King County
A chimney cap installed in Alki costs between $235 and $850. One stainless cap on one flue, reached without special staging, is the $235 job. Covers spanning two or three flues, custom sizes and hard-to-reach tops belong nearer $850. We measure on the roof before ordering anything: a cap that almost fits is the one that leaves in the first storm.
Typical investment
$235–$850
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Book your $99 inspection
$99 plus tax, deducted when you approve the repair
Not sure where to start
Pick what you're seeing at your Alki home — we'll point you to the right fix.
What we do
The same crew, the same written quote — for Alki homes.
Level 1 examination of everything reachable, with a Level 2 camera pass when the reachable parts leave a question open
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Full-height brushing of the flue with a head sized to its shape and material
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Assessment of the stack from roofline to crown, with a photo of each defect
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Camera survey and measurement of the existing flue before anything is ordered
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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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Joints cut back to firm mortar and repointed (tuckpointing) to match the existing profile
Learn moreRanges shown for orientation — the exact figure is written up on-site, after the inspection.
Rain is the plain argument for a cap. Seattle-area gauges kept over many decades come to 38.29 inches of rain and melted snow for a typical twelve months. Three months supply nearly half: November (6.11 inches), December (5.80), January (5.77). An uncovered flue receives its share of every one of those inches straight down the middle, onto the damper and the smoke shelf.
Seattle Parks measures Alki Beach Park at 2.5 miles, from Alki Point around to Duwamish Head, part of it behind a seawall. At low tide, the Alki Elementary nomination says, the sand can stretch as much as 800 feet between the water's edge and Alki Avenue SW. Seattle's windstorm analysis gives the design figure for new buildings: 85 mph held for three seconds, adjusted for location.
A chimney cap is not engineered to that standard unless someone fastens it as if it were. On Alki we do not rely on a slip-on collar. Bolts through the skirt clamp the cap on the tile, or anchors set it in the crown, and a squat model is preferred, wind having less of it to grab.
Every chimney cap installation we do in Alki includes:
Smoke coming back into the room, or a smell that won't go? Book the inspection first.
Book nowTrees are the second argument. The Alki Elementary nomination puts an 11.4-acre western piece of Schmitz Park just half a block from the school, on its east side, and Seattle Parks describes Schmitz Preserve Park as a remnant of old-growth forest. A roof near that edge can expect needles, leaves and the birds that come with them. A screened cap keeps all three out of the flue, provided the mesh is tall enough not to mat over.
We write down three numbers per flue: the tile's outer size, how high it rises over the crown, and the crown's width.
Single-flue, multi-flue or a full-crown cover, chosen for the fuel burned and the room the screen needs.
Bolts grip the tile or anchors bite the crown, after we confirm neither is loose.
With the cap on, a smoke test confirms the flue still pulls, and the photos go to you.
Seattle's 2017 report on unreinforced masonry calls it the only city in the United States to have had that kind of building damaged by three separate earthquakes within 73 years: 1949, 1965 and 2001. For the first of them HistoryLink gives magnitude 7.1, about 30 seconds of shaking and, over western Washington as a whole, some 10,000 chimneys left in need of repair.
The top flue tile is where a cap is fixed, and shaking can leave that very piece loose. Before any bolt goes in, we rock that tile by hand and sound the upper courses. If it moves, the cap waits: a new lid on a loose tile simply leaves with it.
What this work is quoted at for Alki homes — the exact figure comes from the $99 on-site inspection, credited toward the work.
| Service | Price in Alki | What that covers |
|---|---|---|
| Chimney Cap Installation | $235–$850 | Stainless cap fitted; multi-flue and custom at the top |
| 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 |
Ranges are what these jobs are quoted at in Alki. 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.
Alki is the beach neighborhood at the northwest tip of West Seattle, where the Denny party landed in 1851, on Puget Sound and Elliott Bay, with houses and duplexes that date mostly from the 1920s and the 1950s around the school, mixed with newer townhouses and apartments. We work every part of it — Alki Point, the Alki Avenue beachfront included.
AlkiKing County, WA · 47.576, -122.409
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.
It can help when gusts are pushing down the flue, and some caps are built for that. It will not cure a blocked or undersized flue, so we check those first.
We install stainless steel. A galvanized lid is cheaper to buy; rust takes it years earlier.
Not as a rule. Should the technician find damage up top that calls for a full look, he will say so; that inspection is $99 plus tax, an amount later subtracted from repair work you authorize.
A $99 on-site inspection, a written quote before any work, and photos of every item we touch.
