Rainier Beach, King County
Sweeping one flue in Rainier Beach is priced from $189 to $449. The bottom of that bracket is a single fireplace with a season of soot and a roof we can stand on. The top is an insert or stove that has to come forward off the hearth so the brush can get past it, a tall stack, or a pitch that needs roof anchors. You hear the figure before any tarp goes down.
Typical investment
$189–$449
Book an inspection
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 Rainier Beach home — we'll point you to the right fix.
What we do
The same crew, the same written quote — for Rainier Beach homes.
Level 1: every reachable component checked, with a Level 2 camera run added if something stays unclear
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Photo assessment sorting surface wear from structural failure
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Video survey and flue measurements taken before ordering anything
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Flue-by-flue measurements, or the whole crown for a multi-flue hood
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Cleaning and testing of the burner, pilot assembly and igniter
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Starting photos: crown on top, then each side of the stack
Learn moreRanges shown for orientation — the exact figure is written up on-site, after the inspection.
Wood is rarely anyone's main heat here, and that changes how a sweep gets scheduled. The Census Bureau's 2020–2024 survey counts roughly 29 households out of 19,176 in the 98118 ZIP area, which stretches north from Rainier Beach through Hillman City and Seward Park, that rely on wood first. Because the census tracks only primary fuel, a hearth lit on birthdays or in a blackout goes uncounted. Outages are the real test. The city's emergency managers note that the 2006 windstorm left 49 percent of City Light customers in the dark and that the last houses waited a full week for power; a flue that sat idle for three winters can find itself carrying a fire around the clock.
Every chimney sweep we do in Rainier Beach includes:
Smoke coming back into the room, or a smell that won't go? Book the inspection first.
Book nowWe decide whether a flue needs sweeping by measuring, not by counting fires. For a masonry fireplace, CSIA's threshold is one-eighth inch of soot, or less if any glazed creosote has formed; a factory-built firebox should be cleaned once any noticeable layer builds up. The reason to hold to it is in Olympia's numbers: Washington's fire marshal traced seventy-seven of every hundred home heating fires in 2024 to chimneys, flues and the burners that feed them.
Cloths laid between hearth and doorway; the vacuum hums before a single rod goes up.
A probe at the smoke shelf and a light up the flue tell us whether this is routine soot or glazed deposit that needs another method.
We brush the flue with a head matched to the liner, then hand-scrape the damper and smoke chamber.
On the roof, the screen is cleared and the cap fastening, crown and flashing get a look.
Before-and-after photos, and a plain note on anything we saw that needs a closer inspection.
What this work is quoted at for Rainier Beach homes — the exact figure comes from the $99 on-site inspection, credited toward the work.
| Service | Price in Rainier Beach | 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 |
Ranges are what these jobs are quoted at in Rainier Beach. 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.
A sweep starts at the top of the house more often than people expect. On a shaded lot, needles and leaves settle on the cap screen, stay damp and knit together with moss until the mesh is half closed; the fire then smokes into the room and the owner assumes the flue is dirty. Moss on Northwest roofs grows wherever shade meets rain, according to OSU Extension, and a thick mat can pry up shingle tabs until rain gets under them.
Drying time is short. WeatherSpark's Seattle profile records only 8 hours 26 minutes of daylight on December 21 and a clear season that does not begin until mid-June, so litter that lands in November usually stays wet until spring. Every sweep includes clearing the screen, and mesh that has rusted through is reported, not brushed past.
Rainier Beach is a neighborhood in the southeast corner of Seattle, just inside the city limits, on the lakeshore, with homes in a ZIP code area (98118) where roughly one unit in four was built between 1950 and 1969.
Rainier BeachKing County, WA · 47.523, -122.262
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.
Other Seattle companies publish $149 to $249 for a standard fireplace sweep, per Mad Hatter Chimney Sweep's Seattle cost page as read on October 4, 2026. We do not set our price by theirs; ours depends on what is in the flue and how the roof is reached.
Sometimes not every year. We measure, and if the soot is well under an eighth of an inch we tell you so. A flue that sits unused still collects nests and leaf litter at the top, which is what we find most often on light-use chimneys.
Yes. A burn ban limits fires, not maintenance. A cold flue is actually the easiest one to clean.
You get the photos and a note. A full inspection is booked on its own ($99 plus tax) and comes off the price of any repair you later sign for.
A $99 on-site inspection, a written quote before any work, and photos of every item we touch.
