Arbor Heights, King County
Chimney repairs in Arbor Heights start at $425, the figure for a small, contained fix like relaying a handful of loose bricks or sealing a cracked crown. Larger work, from rebuilding the top courses of a stack to replacing a damper, is quoted after we have seen the damage, with materials and labor shown separately. Every repair is photographed before we touch it and again when we are done, so the record of what was wrong and what changed stays with the house.
Typical investment
From $425
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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 Arbor Heights home — we'll point you to the right fix.
What we do
The same crew, the same written quote — for Arbor Heights 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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Camera survey and measurement of the existing flue before anything is ordered
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Measurement of each flue tile, or of the whole crown for a multi-flue cap
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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.
At the southern edge of the neighborhood, the Seola Beach ravine runs roughly a mile inland from Puget Sound, and the Seattle city limit follows it. The Seattle Landslide Study records six slides on its west side since a spring storm in 1986, mostly in loose slope debris or yard fill; one debris flow that year was traced to a broken sewer main. Most Arbor Heights streets sit well away from that slope. Where a house does sit near a steep edge, we check the chimney for lean and for cracks that run diagonally, the usual signs of a structure responding to its footing.
Over half the occupied homes inside the Census ZIP boundary drawn around this end of the peninsula, 53.0 percent, depend mainly on electricity for heat; another 8.0 percent burn oil, the largest share of any West Seattle ZIP area. Only a sliver of households list wood as their main source. The survey counts the everyday furnace or baseboard, never the hearth in the den.
Normal days end when the wind comes. Seattle's hazard analysis notes that West Seattle was singled out in a 1958 windstorm outage, and that in the December 2006 storm almost half of City Light's customers lost power, some for a week. On nights like those, a fireplace that has sat unused becomes the heat source. A cracked flue or a loose crown that seemed harmless in summer is the reason we prefer to repair it before the storm, not after.
Every chimney repair we do in Arbor Heights includes:
Smoke coming back into the room, or a smell that won't go? Book the inspection first.
Book nowThe commonest repairs we price here are at the top of the stack: a crown split by water and frost, mortar washed out of the upper joints, bricks that rock under a hand. Below the roofline the trouble is quieter, usually a damper that no longer seals or a firebox with open joints. Each one lets water or heat go where it should not, and each gets more expensive the longer it waits.
Before quoting, we trace the defect to its source, because a crack that comes back means the first repair treated a symptom.
Each repair is described, priced and photographed. Urgent items are flagged; the rest you may book for a drier month.
Masonry is cut out and relaid with mortar matched to the existing brick; metal parts are replaced with corrosion-resistant ones.
Closing photos sit beside the opening ones, and we note anything else we saw that deserves watching.
Census estimates put the median home in the ZIP area around Arbor Heights at 1965, with only 9.5 percent of units older than 1940. So most chimneys we repair here are postwar, not prewar. Postwar does not mean modern: a stack laid in the 1950s predates the steel reinforcing that Seattle's residential code now asks of a new masonry chimney in the higher seismic categories.
FEMA's recovery advisory on earthquake-damaged chimneys is blunt about the weakest ones: old, unreinforced stacks with tired mortar are the likeliest to fall, and rebuilding them exactly as they were leaves them just as vulnerable. Its preferred alternatives involve lowering the masonry and carrying the flue on in metal. For a minor repair we simply fix what is broken; when the damage is serious, we lay out those options alongside a like-for-like quote and let you choose.
What this work is quoted at for Arbor Heights homes — the exact figure comes from the $99 on-site inspection, credited toward the work.
| Service | Price in Arbor Heights | What that covers |
|---|---|---|
| Chimney Repair | From $425 | Masonry repair — brick and mortar, scoped after diagnosis |
| 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 Cap Installation | $235–$850 | Stainless cap fitted; multi-flue and custom at the top |
Ranges are what these jobs are quoted at in Arbor Heights. 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.
Arbor Heights is the southernmost part of West Seattle, south of SW Roxbury Street, annexed to Seattle in 1954, with mostly detached houses, about half of those in its ZIP code area built between 1940 and 1969. We work every part of it — Arroyo Heights, Seola Beach included.
Arbor HeightsKing County, WA · 47.509, -122.378
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.
Our repair pricing begins at $425. Below that, the work is usually a matter of sealing or adjusting that we handle during a sweep or inspection.
Not always, but it is wise when the damage might go deeper than it looks. The camera visit is $99 plus tax; if we then do the repair, the bill drops by that $99.
Repointing a chimney appears on the residential code's list of work exempt from a building permit. Structural work waits until SDCI has answered our question about it.
A $99 on-site inspection, a written quote before any work, and photos of every item we touch.
