Chimney and fireplace service in St. Paul and the East Metro

St. Paul is nearly as old as Minneapolis. The 2024 American Community Survey counts 41.6 percent of its housing as built before 1940 and another 17.7 percent from 1940 to 1959, with a median year of 1952. South St. Paul skews toward the postwar decades, with a third of its homes from 1940 to 1959, and Stillwater stands out among the suburbs with about a quarter of its houses built before 1940. In all three, the brick chimney is often older than anyone living in the house.

Head east and north and the picture changes. Roseville, White Bear Lake and West St. Paul have median build years of 1969 or 1970, Shoreview 1981, and Woodbury 1997, with more than 41 percent of Woodbury's homes built in 2000 or later. Out there the usual fireplace is a factory-built unit in a sided chase or a direct-vent gas model. Gas heats about two thirds of St. Paul homes and 80 to 85 percent in Woodbury and Stillwater.

Historic Preservation Areas in St. Paul

St. Paul's Department of Safety and Inspections says that a home in a Historic Preservation Area needs a permit for exterior repairs such as tuckpointing no matter how small the job is. That catches many owners off guard, because the same repair outside a district may need nothing. Before we quote tuckpointing, crown work or a rebuild on a St. Paul house, we check whether the address sits in a preservation area, and we help you put together photos and a written scope for the Heritage Preservation staff.

The city also treats a factory-built fireplace or a wood stove as mechanical permit work. If you are adding one, we check the permit side with the city at the quoting stage, not after the install date is set.

A colder east side

NOAA's 1991–2020 normals show the east side running colder than the airport. The University of Minnesota station on the St. Paul campus averages about 152 nights a year at or below freezing and about 24 nights at or below zero. The Stillwater station southwest of town averages about 159 freezing nights and 34 nights below zero, with roughly 80 freeze-thaw days a year by our count from those normals, a few more than at MSP.

For a brick chimney that means more cycles of water getting into a crack, freezing and opening it wider. A crown that is flat, cracked or missing its drip edge lets that water straight into the top courses. The current Minnesota Residential Code describes the crown as a concrete, metal or stone cap, sloped to shed water, with a drip edge and a caulked bond break around the flue liner, and that is how we build a new one.

• Crown crack repair: $200 – $700+
• New crown with drip edge: $1,000 – $3,000
• Spalled brick repair: $1,000 – $3,500

Woodbury and the newer suburbs

A home built in the late 1990s usually has a metal chimney running up a wood-framed chase with a sheet-metal cover on top. Those covers rust, sag and pool water, and the water finds its way down the inside of the chase long before anyone sees a stain. A chase cover replacement runs $300 – $700, and repairs to the factory-built chimney itself typically run $250 – $1,200.

The other common call in Woodbury, Maplewood and Shoreview is a gas fireplace that will not light or will not stay lit. That usually comes down to one part, and the ranges are printed on our gas fireplace repair page.