Where we work
Tacoma, University Place, Gig Harbor, Fircrest, Puyallup, Lakewood, Steilacoom, Bonney Lake, Sumner, Fife, DuPont and Milton — find your town below and book the visit from its page.
Service-area map — Pierce County, WA. Map data © OpenStreetMap contributors.
12 communities, one local crew. The territory reads best by its water. Tacoma sits on Commencement Bay, with the Port of Tacoma at its southeastern end and Fife on the old farmland just south of it. Gig Harbor is across the Tacoma Narrows Bridge on State Route 16. University Place has its own Puget Sound waterfront, Fircrest grew out of the Regents Park subdivision, Lakewood wraps around American Lake and four smaller lakes, and Steilacoom, the first town incorporated in Washington, faces Anderson and Ketron islands. DuPont began as a company town. Inland, Puyallup and Sumner share the Puyallup River valley, Milton looks down on it from its hillside, and Bonney Lake sits on the plateau around Lake Tapps, at roughly 580 feet.
Those settings change the weather a chimney takes. The Tacoma #1 weather station averaged just under 40 inches of precipitation a year from 1982 to 2016, with November the wettest month, and recorded about 32 days a year with a low at or below freezing. The Puyallup valley station counted more than twice as many freezing days over its record, and the long-record station nearest the Bonney Lake plateau, at Buckley, averaged 48.5 inches of precipitation and about 60 freezing days a year. Masonry that soaks up rain and then freezes is what cracks crowns and flakes brick faces, so in the valley and on the plateau a chimney is worth a look after a cold winter, not only before the next one.
The houses differ as much as the weather. About 27% of Tacoma's homes were built in 1939 or earlier, many in the North Slope, Stadium-Seminary and Proctor districts, and plenty of them still carry a chimney as old as the house. Fircrest is mostly post-war, with a median build year of 1966. Gig Harbor, Bonney Lake and DuPont are far newer, with median build years between 1998 and 2002, and in Bonney Lake and DuPont most homes heat with gas. So every visit opens the same way, with a photographed inspection and a written quote, but the inspection looks for different things on a 1910 brick stack than on a factory-built gas fireplace.
Pierce County, WA
Pierce County's median home was built in 1986, and about 42% of its housing predates 1980, so the county holds both generations of chimney: old masonry flues in Tacoma and the valley towns, factory-built fireplaces and gas inserts in the newer subdivisions. Burning here also follows Puget Sound Clean Air Agency rules. Burn bans apply across the county, and uncertified wood stoves and inserts have been illegal to operate in the Tacoma-Pierce County Smoke Reduction Zone since October 1, 2015.
Licensed& insured Washington chimney contractor
12 communitiesAcross the South Sound, Pierce County
$99 plus taxInspection, credited toward an approved quote
Every jobDocumented with before-and-after photos
Reserve a genuine opening on the crew's calendar — nothing to pay at booking. We inspect thoroughly, quote in writing, and photograph every repair.
