Where we work: four towns in east King County

4 communities, one local crew. Keeping to four towns means less time on the road and a crew that learns what each place is built of. Redmond was still a town of about 1,500 people in 1961; it annexed Overlake, Viewpoint and Bear Creek between 1962 and 1966, and nearly a quarter of its housing dates from the 1960s and 1970s. Sammamish built later, with more than half of its homes going up in the 1980s and 1990s. Duvall divides between the small lots of Old Town and the larger suburban lots of its upper plateau, and its median home dates from 2000. Carnation, platted as Tolt in 1902, is the smallest of the four and has the oldest houses: about one in seven was built before 1960.

Rain is the main thing a chimney has to stand up to here, and it gets heavier toward the valley. WeatherSpark's November average rises from about 8.7 inches in Redmond and 8.9 in Sammamish to 9.5 in Duvall and 9.8 in Carnation, and in every one of them the wet season opens in early October and runs into May. Sammamish's hazard plan adds two things for the plateau: snow that piles up deeper than in neighboring communities, and winter storms that drop trees and limbs because the tree cover is so dense. Shaking is the slower risk for brick. After the Nisqually earthquake of 2001, USGS researchers walked about 50 square kilometers of the metropolitan area block by block: of the roughly 60,000 chimneys they looked at, 1,556 were damaged.

Every visit runs in the same order. The technician inspects the chimney and photographs it, you get the findings and an itemized price on paper, and a repair is scheduled only after you approve that price. The online calendar shows real openings for your town, so you choose a slot yourself and skip the wait for a call back.