Chimney Inspections in Whittier, CA

Chimney Inspections for Whittier Homeowners

Whittier has the oldest and best housing stock in our service area and, for a chimney company, the most consequential recent history. Uptown and the streets around Whittier College carry Craftsman and early brick houses from the 1900s and 1910s, much of it unlined. Then there is the 1987 Whittier Narrows earthquake. That event did enormous damage to unreinforced masonry here, and a great deal of it was repaired cosmetically — the visible crack pointed up, the stack left standing, the flue inside never examined. We still find the consequences on camera nearly forty years later: shear cracks running through terracotta liners in houses whose owners have no idea anything is wrong, because from the hearth it looks fine. Up in Friendly Hills and College Hills the picture is different again, with 1960s and 1970s hillside houses, tall exposed stacks catching wind off the ridge, and access that frequently needs planning. If you own pre-1960 brick in Whittier and it has not had a camera survey, that is the single thing worth doing.

Pre-1930 unlined brick in Uptown, unresolved 1987 Whittier Narrows earthquake damage, and exposed hillside stacks in Friendly Hills.

An inspection is the only part of this trade that tells you something you could not otherwise know. A flue can look perfectly sound from the hearth and be cracked through two storeys up. That matters more here than in most of the country because of what the ground does. The 1987 Whittier Narrows earthquake put hairline shears through masonry across the Whittier and Pico Rivera area that have quietly widened ever since, and the Portuguese Bend slide is still moving under parts of Rancho Palos Verdes today. Add the ordinary rate of settlement in the postwar tracts built on old dairy and farm land in Cerritos, Artesia and Norwalk, and cracked flue tiles are common in houses that have never had a bad fire. We also do a lot of point-of-sale work. A Level 2 inspection is what a lender, an insurer or a careful buyer's agent will ask for, and a written report with photographs settles the question rather than starting an argument.