Tacoma, Pierce County
Put a cap on a Tacoma chimney and you will pay between $265 and $750. Ready-made stainless for one flue tile lands near $265. Wide pre-war crowns with two or three tiles sticking up need a made-to-measure cover, and that is where the top of the bracket comes from. A cap is a small part that does a lot here: it keeps rain out of the flue, animals out of the smoke chamber and embers on your own roof.
Typical investment
$265–$750
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$99 plus tax, deducted when you approve the repair
Not sure where to start
Pick what you're seeing at your Tacoma home — we'll point you to the right fix.
What we do
The same crew, the same written quote — for Tacoma homes.
Level 1 or Level 2 as needed; Level 2 includes a camera run through the entire flue
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Top-to-bottom brushing of flue and firebox under drop cloths, with a HEPA vacuum pulling the dust
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Loose or damaged brick, open joints and firebox panels repaired
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A full-length stainless-steel or cast liner, firebox to chimney top
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Burner, pilot assembly and valve cleaned and adjusted
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Crown patched, or recast entirely if it can't be saved
Learn moreRanges shown for orientation — the exact figure is written up on-site, after the inspection.
Plenty of chimneys on North End and College Park streets were never capped, or lost their cap to a windstorm decades ago. Wide pre-war stacks often carry more than one flue tile poking above the crown, and a single cap that covers all of them is usually neater and sturdier than several small ones.
Tacoma boomed after 1873, when the Northern Pacific Railroad picked Commencement Bay for the western end of its transcontinental line. The population went from 1,098 in 1880 to 36,006 ten years later, and the city became, in HistoryLink's words, easily the lumber capital of the world.
That building rush still shows in the census: roughly 27 percent of Tacoma homes date from 1939 or before, against about a tenth countywide. Wide brick stacks from those decades often end in several flue tiles, and we measure the whole crown so one cap can cover them all.
Every chimney cap installation we do in Tacoma includes:
Smoke coming back into the room, or a smell that won't go? Book the inspection first.
Book nowWhat we find on uncapped Tacoma chimneys: pooled water and rust on the damper, nesting material from birds and raccoons on the smoke shelf, flue tiles split by years of rain running straight down them, and crowns eroding around the openings. Screens clogged with soot on older caps are a problem of their own.
The top of a chimney moves the most when the ground shakes. After the 2001 Nisqually earthquake, magnitude 6.8 and centered deep under Anderson Island, federal inspectors recorded damaged chimneys in about a third of 30,000 homes they visited.
A cap anchored to a crown that has cracked or loosened does not stay put for long. Before fastening anything, we check the crown and the last courses of brick for movement, and report it if the top needs repair first.
Mesh size is not a matter of taste. Code section R1003.9.2 wants openings that stop a ball of one half inch but pass one of three eighths, on a screen you can remove to clean. Too fine a mesh clogs with soot; too coarse lets embers out.
Nearby in the same chapter, the code fixes the minimum height of the top: three feet over its own roof opening, plus two feet over any roof or wall closer than ten feet. A cap is mounted above that minimum; it is no substitute for it. In local historic districts, visible changes to a chimney may also need city design review.
Every flue tile and the crown around it are measured, since old Tacoma stacks rarely match standard cap sizes.
Single-flue or full-crown cover, the mesh size, and a lid wide enough to shed rain away from the tiles.
The cap is set, screwed to the flue or anchored into the crown, and checked for wobble at every corner.
Debris found under the old cap is removed and you get photos of the new cap from the roof.
What this work is quoted at for Tacoma homes — the exact figure comes from the $99 on-site inspection, credited toward the work.
| Service | Price in Tacoma | What that covers |
|---|---|---|
| Chimney Cap Installation | $265–$750 | 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 $375 | Masonry repair — brick and mortar, scoped after diagnosis |
Ranges are what these jobs are quoted at in Tacoma. 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 spark screen keeps embers from landing on the roof or in the yard. Tacoma's fire department applies the same caution outdoors: a recreational fire may be no wider than 3 feet and no taller than 2, at least 25 feet from any structure, with an extinguisher or charged hose ready.
Those fires are off during any burn ban called by the fire department or by Puget Sound Clean Air Agency. The agency posts ban status on its website and on 800-595-4341, and indoor wood fireplaces follow the same calendar.
Tacoma sits on Commencement Bay, the arm of Puget Sound that runs from Point Defiance to Browns Point, and its long-running weather station records an average of 39.76 inches of precipitation a year, with 6.82 in November and 6.08 in January.
An open flue collects all of it that falls on the opening. Over a wet season that adds up to enough water to rust a damper, soak the smoke chamber and wash mortar out of the tiles. A lid wider than the flue, with a drip edge, stops most of it at the top.
Tacoma is the port city the Northern Pacific Railroad chose in 1873 as the western terminus of its transcontinental line, on Commencement Bay, with the territory's oldest housing — about 27% of homes built in 1939 or earlier, in Queen Anne, Craftsman and Foursquare styles. We work every part of it — North Slope, Stadium-Seminary, Proctor, College Park, Buckley's Addition included.
TacomaPierce County, WA · 47.253, -122.444
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.
Installed, $265 to $750. One flue and an off-the-shelf size keeps it low; covering a whole multi-flue crown with a custom piece takes it high.
Washington's fire marshal lists a cap among basic heating precautions, and on a flue that faces this much rain it is about the least expensive protection there is.
Usually, yes. Where tiles are broken or uneven we mount the cap to the crown instead, and note the tiles for repair.
A $99 on-site inspection, a written quote before any work, and photos of every item we touch.
