Our service area: ten South Seattle neighborhoods

10 communities, one local crew. The ten are all in Seattle, and they were built at different times. Georgetown had its building boom between 1890 and 1916 and ran its own city government until 1910. Columbia City began as a streetcar townsite in 1891. Most houses on Beacon Hill between McClellan Street and Jefferson Park went up from 1910 to 1929, and Mount Baker filled in over the same decades after its 1907 plat. The valley floor kept growing later: in the 98118 ZIP area, which takes in six of our neighborhoods, about a quarter of the housing dates from 1950 to 1969, and NewHolly, beside Othello station, was finished in 2005.

Rain is the part every neighborhood shares. WeatherSpark puts Seattle's wet season at about 6.6 months, running October 10 through April 30, with roughly 7.5 inches in an average November, and has the wind coming mostly from the south for nine and a half months of the year. Earthquakes are the other test for brick. A USGS report on the Nisqually earthquake of February 28, 2001 counted chimney damage at roughly one in three of the 30,000 houses FEMA examined, and Seattle has required damaged chimneys to be rebuilt to a written rule since 2004.

Every job runs in the same order. A technician inspects the chimney and photographs what is there. You get the findings and a price for each line in writing. Nothing is scheduled until you approve that price. You can reserve an inspection online from the times open in your neighborhood.