Masonry repair
Sweep & inspection
Caps & crowns
Flue relining
Gas fireplace serviceLevel 1 sweep and inspection to the NFPA 211 annual standard - flue, crown, cap, and flashing checked and photographed
Chimney sweep logs do not sweep chimneys. They loosen some creosote - which then falls where a brush and vacuum still have to collect it.
Fast, Reliable Fireplace Repair Across Los Altos
Fireplace repair in Los Altos typically runs $180 to $1,400 depending on what’s actually wrong, and most jobs are completed in a single visit. We serve the whole Los Altos area, from The Country Club to the hillside properties along Page Mill Road, and we’ve been doing it since 2002. The trick in Los Altos isn’t just knowing fireplaces. It’s knowing what the town’s older homes, wet winters, and wooded lots do to a chimney over thirty or forty years. Call (669) 266-5073 and we’ll give you a written price before any work starts.
Why Ashby Chimney San Jose Is Los Altos’s Preferred Fireplace Repair Company
Los Altos homeowners call us because the house was built in 1962 or 1978 and the fireplace has never worked quite right, or it worked fine until the winter rains got into the flue and now there’s smoke rolling back into the living room. Nathan Corliss leads our Fireplace Repair team, and he’s the kind of technician who will show you the crack in the firebox on camera before he asks you to spend a dollar fixing it. That matters in a town where half the chimneys are original to the house and the other half have been patched over by someone who didn’t want to explain what they found.
We answer the phone with a live person, every time. You won’t get a voicemail loop or a call center script. You’ll get a straight answer about whether we can be at your Los Altos home that week. And when we arrive, you’ll know exactly who’s walking in: background-checked, uniformed technicians who leave the hearth cleaner than they found it. That’s the Kingswell Way: say the price, show up in the window, leave it cleaner, put the guarantee in writing, come back if it fails.
Every repair we complete in Los Altos carries a written guarantee, and if a covered repair fails inside that guarantee period, we come back and fix it at no charge. That’s the 365-Day Done Right Promise. It’s not an add-on. It’s just how we work. Most fireplace repair companies won’t put that in writing. We do, every single time.
Styles & brands we work with
Gas Fireplace Installation in Los Altos
Gas Fireplace Installation in Los Altos usually runs between $1,200 and $3,800 for a full insert with a new venting system, depending on whether the existing chimney can accept a direct-vent liner or needs structural work first. In a town with this many mid-century homes, we’re often converting an original wood-burning fireplace that hasn’t been used in a decade because the flue was never maintained. That conversion makes the fireplace usable again without the creosote buildup and wildlife problems that come with an open wood flue on a wooded lot.
Inserts for Original Wood-Burning Fireboxes
If your Los Altos home has a 1950s or 1960s masonry firebox, a gas insert can slide right into the existing opening and vent through a new stainless steel liner run up the old flue. We size the unit to the firebox, so you’re not paying for a unit that doesn’t fit or spending on masonry rebuild work you don’t need. The liner we use comes from brands like DuraFlex and Olympia Chimney, and it carries its own manufacturer warranty on top of our written guarantee.
Complete Gas Fireplace Replacement
For homeowners who want a clean-slate approach, we remove the old gas unit, replace the venting, and set a new direct-vent fireplace that seals against the house. In hillside homes where drafts and backdrafting have been a chronic problem, a properly sealed direct-vent unit fixes the smoke issue permanently. We provide a written price before any work begins, and the number on the invoice matches the number we quoted at the door.
Gas Fireplace Maintenance in Los Altos
Gas Fireplace Maintenance in Los Altos generally costs $150 to $300 per fireplace, and for homes with multiple units we schedule all of them in one visit so you’re not paying trip fees three times. Los Altos’s cool, wet winters mean gas fireplaces often sit unused from May through October, and then get fired up hard in November. That seasonal cycling does specific things to a gas unit: dust settles on the burner assembly, spider webs clog the venturi, and small gas leaks at the fittings go unnoticed until the first cold night. An annual service call catches those before they become repair bills.
Seasonal Start-Up Service
Before you run your gas fireplace for the first time each fall, we clean the burner, check the pilot assembly, test the thermocouple, and make sure the venting isn’t blocked. On wooded lots like those in Los Altos Hills, we commonly find debris or even small nests in direct-vent terminations that were clear in the spring. This is also when we catch gas valves that are starting to stick, which is cheaper to address in October than in January.
Multi-Fireplace Annual Inspections
Larger Los Altos homes often have three or more fireplaces, which means three or more flues, three gas lines, and three sets of controls. We inspect each one individually and give you a written report with photos. If two fireplaces look great and one has a cracked firebox panel or a rusted damper, you’ll see it in the photos, and you can decide what needs doing now and what can wait.
Trusted Brands We Service in Los Altos
Most Los Altos homes with gas fireplaces have units from Heat & Glo, Heatilator, Majestic, or Napoleon, and we service all of them. When repairs call for new parts, we use materials from chimney-trade suppliers like HeatShield for firebox repair, Gelco for cast-in-place liners, and Famco for dampers and caps. Because we stock common parts for these brands on our trucks, we can often complete the repair the same day we diagnose it. That’s a real advantage for Los Altos customers who don’t want to wait a week for a part to ship while the fireplace sits cold.
See the difference
Before
After
Before
After
Before
AfterCommon Fireplace Repair Problems We See in Los Altos Homes
- Raccoon and squirrel nests in uncapped chimneys. The oak and redwood canopy over many Los Altos neighborhoods, especially in the hills, means chimneys without caps become animal entry points. By the time we’re called, there’s often a full nest in the smoke chamber and flammable debris packed against the flue liner.
- Spalling bricks on exterior chimneys. Los Altos’s winter rains soak into the masonry, and when temperatures drop, the water expands and pops the brick faces off. Homeowners find brick chips in their gutters and on their roofs, and the exposed soft brick underneath absorbs even more water the following year.
- Cracked flue liners from water damage. Clay tile liners crack when moisture gets behind them and the fireplace is used while the flue is still wet. That crack then lets heat and gases reach the masonry around the flue, and creosote builds up faster in the damaged section. This is the most common finding during a Level 2 inspection on a Los Altos hillside property.
- Backdrafting fireplaces in twostory homes. Larger custom homes in Los Altos often have chimney drafting problems caused by competing air pressure from kitchen exhaust fans, upstairs HVAC returns, and tall flues. The fireplace that worked fine for decades suddenly smokes every time. Fixing it usually means a shorter flue cap, a damper adjustment, or a liner that actually matches the appliance size.
Pricing for Fireplace Repair in Los Altos, CA
Here are the ranges we quote most often in Los Altos. A damper repair runs $180 to $450. A firebox repair with HeatShield surfacing runs $500 to $1,100. A stainless steel flue liner installation runs $1,100 to $2,400 depending on flue height and access. A full gas fireplace insert conversion runs $1,200 to $3,800. Animal nest removal and sanitizing runs $250 to $600 before any repair work begins. The factors that move the price are flue height (a two-story Los Altos Hills chimney costs more than a one-story ranch), access (roof pitch matters), and whether the firebox needs resurfacing or just cleaning. Every job gets a written quote before we start. Call (669) 266-5073 for a free estimate.
We Also Serve Cities Near Los Altos
Our crews also handle Fireplace Repair in Los Altos neighbors like Mountain View, Stanford, Palo Alto, and Menlo Park. If you’re in one of those areas, the same written pricing, written guarantee, and live-answer phone line applies. Call us and you’ll get the same straight talk from the same team.
Serving Los Altos, CA - Our Local Coverage Area
We’re based in the Los Altos area and know this community well. Use the map below to see our service coverage - if you’re nearby, we can almost certainly help.
FAQs About Fireplace Repair in Los Altos
That smell is almost always a dead squirrel, raccoon, or bird that entered through an uncapped chimney and couldn’t get back out. Uncapped chimneys on wooded lots in Los Altos, especially in neighborhoods with heavy oak and redwood cover, are essentially open invitations. The animal enters, gets trapped, and dies in the smoke chamber or behind the damper. We remove the animal, sanitize the area, and install a proper chimney cap so it doesn’t happen again. The cap is the permanent fix; the removal is just the cleanup. Call (669) 266-5073 and we’ll walk you through what we find.
Every fireplace should get a Level 1 inspection annually, even the ones you never use. In large Los Altos homes with rarely used fireplaces, hidden problems like a cracked firebox panel, a rusted damper, or a blocked flue go unnoticed because nothing tells you they’re there until you light a fire. The unused fireplaces are actually the ones most likely to have animal intrusion, because nobody notices the cap is missing. A Level 1 inspection takes about 45 minutes per fireplace and catches problems while they’re still small. We can inspect all three in one visit and give you a written report with photos for each one.
Yes, and this is one of the most common jobs we do for Los Altos homeowners with mid-century homes. When the original firebox and flue are still structurally sound, we can install a gas insert with a new venting liner without doing a full masonry rebuild. You get a real heating appliance that turns on with a switch, and you stop dealing with creosote, ash, and the animals that keep finding their way down the flue. The conversion typically runs $1,200 to $3,800 in Los Altos depending on the unit and liner length. We size the insert to the existing firebox and give you a written price before any work starts.
A Level 2 inspection includes everything in a Level 1 plus a video camera scan of the entire flue, a check of the chimney crown and flashing from the roof, and an assessment of the smoke chamber and firebox. On tall masonry chimneys in Los Altos Hills, we also check for structural movement, because hillside soils and a tall unsupported chimney stack can shift over decades. The camera reveals the condition of the flue liner, any hidden animal nests, and any water damage that isn’t visible from the ground. If you’re buying or selling a hillside home, this is the inspection to order. We charge $229 for a Level 2 inspection and you get the full written report with images.
That’s a repair in most cases, specifically crown repair and brick spalling remediation. Los Altos’s wet winters are the culprit: water soaks into the brick, freezes, and pops the faces off. If the chimney crown is cracked or missing, water keeps getting in and the spalling continues. We rebuild the crown, replace the damaged bricks, and repoint the joints. If the damage has gone on long enough that the structural brick is crumbling, we may recommend a partial rebuild of the upper chimney section. Most Los Altos homes need the repair route, not a full rebuild. We’ll show you photos and give you a written price before touching anything.
When your fireplace isn’t safe or isn’t working in Los Altos, call Ashby Chimney San Jose at (669) 266-5073. We’ll answer with a live person, schedule a visit, give you a written price before any work begins, and back the repair with our written guarantee. Nathan Corliss and his crew know these Los Altos chimneys, and they’ll show you exactly what they find.
Written by Nathan Corliss, Owner at Ashby Chimney San Jose, serving Los Altos since 2002.