Chimney Repair in Plymouth
Many of Plymouth's oldest houses stand in plats named for Medicine Lake, Parkers Lake, gardens, and orchards, several of them housing structures decades older than the village's 1955 incorporation. Houses were added to several of those plats, a few at a time, for more than a century, so a single street can hold houses and their chimneys built a whole lifetime apart.
10 Years
Workmanship warranty, in writing
Plats That Filled for a Century
Hennepin County's property records place 137 houses built before 1940 in 13 groups of older plats. Among them are Medicine Lake Park, Parkers Lakeside, Suburbandale on Parker Lake, Christiansens Parkers Lake, Fricks Garden Tracts, Greers Orchard Tracts, Elmhurst, Beacon Heights and City View Acres.
Medicine Lake Park 3rd Division has 85 houses, with county build years from 1880 to 2019. Parkers Lakeside Addition has 67 built between 1900 and 2021, and Elmhurst has 102 built between 1905 and 2025. The stacks along one of those streets went up in different decades, by different hands, and have been patched, capped, or left alone by different owners since, so Sam prices each one from what it shows him on the day.
A lake in the plat name is no sign of age on its own, either. Medicine Lake Estates, Medicine Lake Highlands and West Medicine Lake Terrace were built out in short runs between 1977 and 1987, and a chimney there belongs with the city's newer houses.
A Cottage Inside the House
The City of Plymouth's history says that by 1880 Medicine Lake had become a major tourist attraction, with resorts built around its shores. In 1887 the land on the lake's peninsula was divided into lots as Medicine Lake Park, First Division, and the village history of Medicine Lake says most early residents there lived on the lake only in summer. The Medicine Lake Park plats extend into Plymouth, where the county records 149 houses in its divisions, and some lots there may have been started the same way.
Where a summer place was later winterized, enlarged, or reroofed, the chimney may be older than the surrounding rooms. Possible signs include a stack that stands short above a roof raised later, flashing from a different era than the shingles or brick that has weathered for longer than anything beside it.
From Summer Place to Year-Round House
The same village history dates each stage on the peninsula: rail service on the Luce Line in January 1914, electricity in May or June 1926, and then, in the early 1950s, a building boom that put new houses on part of it. A summer place on the Plymouth side of the lake may have undergone the same change in stages, and each stage could have left its mark on the chimney: a stack first built for a stove, then a furnace connected to it. The county's record dates 11 of Plymouth's 149 Medicine Lake Park houses to before 1926, so at least those 11 are old enough to have made that change.
What a Lake-Plat Chimney Starts At
Before you call
Every figure on this page depends on square footage and on what we find when we look. They are rough guides to help you decide whether to call, not quotes. The exact number comes after the visit, and the visit is free.
Sweeping, creosote, flue liners, dampers, gas inserts and wood stoves go to a chimney sweep or installer.
What Customers Say
What appears below is our live Google feed rather than testimonials we picked out, so it shows whatever is genuinely on it.
The Street, the Plat and the Stack
Give us the street and, if you have it, the plat name from your tax statement. Then tell us what you know about the chimney itself: whether it is older than part of the house, whether a roof or an addition went on around it, and what has been done to the top. Any idea of when the house was first lived in during the winter would help as well.
For active leaks, we work evenings and weekends, and urgent scheduling costs more, which we tell you before you agree. Exterior mortar work is scheduled for weather mild enough for it to cure.
Asked About Plymouth Chimneys
Our house is on one of the old lake plats, but it was built in the 1990s. Does the cottage history apply to us?+
Less of it. A chimney built with the house is the same age as the rooms and roof around it, so most of the questions about later additions fall away. The prices and the scope are the same.
We are on a Parkers Lake plat. Did our house start as a summer cottage too?+
Possibly, though the record points elsewhere. The resorts in the City's history are on Medicine Lake. Its account of Parkers Lake is of farms: the Parker brothers began buying land along the northeast shore in 1856, and their farms there came to be connected. So the summer-cottage stages above fit Medicine Lake better. On a Parkers Lake plat, an older stack may have been built for a farm household living there year-round.