About Crown Heights Chimney Sweep

Who We Are and How the Business Runs

We are a working crew, not a dispatch office. The people who answer the phone are the people who will be on your roof. We operate as a service-area business: there is no shop to visit, the equipment lives on the truck, and we come to you anywhere in Crown Heights and the neighborhoods around it.

Our specialty is the masonry chimney as a system, from the firebox and damper up through the flue to the crown, cap and flashing. On the limestone rows and pre-war apartment buildings of central Brooklyn that system is often a century old, and keeping it safe takes both sweep work and real masonry. We do both, which means you do not get a sweep who refers out the repointing or a mason who has never run a camera up a flue.

The work splits roughly three ways: cleaning and inspection, masonry repair of the stack, and installing stainless steel liners and caps. Dryer vent cleaning rides along because it uses the same tools and addresses the same fire risk.

The Order We Do Things In

Good chimney work is mostly sequence. Clean before you inspect, inspect before you quote, document before you repair.

1. Listen to the symptomSmoke in the room, a stain, a smell, a crack somebody noticed from the street. The symptom tells us what to bring and where to look first.
2. Inspect top and bottomWe look up the flue from the firebox and down it from the roof, check the crown, flashing and joints, and photograph everything in daylight.
3. Put it in writingThe report separates safety issues from water issues from cosmetic ones, with photos attached. If the honest answer is that nothing needs doing this year, that is what the report says.
4. Do the work with matching materialsType N mortar on old brick, copper and lead at the roofline, stainless steel in the flue, a reclaimed brick match where units are replaced. The repair should look like it was always there and last like it.

Insurance, Paperwork and What You Keep

We carry liability and workers' compensation coverage appropriate for roof and masonry work in New York City, and we provide certificates on request before the visit. Co-op and condo boards along Eastern Parkway ask for this routinely and we have the documents ready.

After every inspection you receive a written report with dated photographs of the flue interior, the crown, the flashing and any defects we found. After every repair you receive a written description of the work done, the materials used and the guarantee that applies to it. Buyers, sellers, boards and insurers can all read these documents without us in the room.

We do not recommend work we cannot show you a reason for in a photo. That is the whole trust model: clean flues, honest inspections, Crown Heights crews.

Why Crown Heights Chimneys Shaped How We Work

The limestone rowhouses here taught us to carry soft mortar. Their brick and stone were laid in lime-rich mixes, and a hard modern repointing cracks the units around it within a few winters. Type N is the standard on our truck for that reason.

The pre-war buildings on Eastern Parkway taught us to plan access. Tall boiler stacks over flat roofs and parapets mean bulkhead doors, supers, boards and insurance certificates before any ladder goes up. The detached Victorian frame houses to the south taught us flashing: an exterior brick chimney meeting a pitched roof is where copper and lead earn their cost.

Those three building types cover most of what stands on these blocks, and most of what stands in the neighborhoods around it. Learning them well is what lets us work fast without working carelessly.