Cleveland, OhioCleveland, Ohio · Chimney services

Your chimney has been out in a Cleveland winter for decades. We take care of that.

Sweeping, inspection, masonry, relining and leak repair across Greater Cleveland — one crew for the whole chimney, and every finding shown to you in photos.

Call216-647-1882 Get a free estimate

Low flames and glowing embers over logs in a clean masonry firebox with a herringbone firebrick back wall

Every finding shown in photosFindings documented in photos — nothing taken on faith
Free estimates on repair workFree estimates on repair work, honest triage: urgent / plan-for / fine
Locally owned — one crewLocally owned — one crew, one person responsible

The work

One crew for the whole chimney

All 9 services →

Chimney Sweep & Cleaning

Full mechanical sweep of the flue, smoke chamber and firebox — creosote out, dust contained, and a look at the whole system while we're in it.

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Chimney Inspection

Camera inspection of the full flue, plus the firebox, damper, crown, cap and flashing — documented in photos, explained in plain language.

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Chimney Repair & Rebuilds

Masonry repair from spot fixes to full stack rebuilds — spalled brick, failed joints, and chimneys the freeze-thaw cycle has taken apart.

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Chimney Liner & Relining

Stainless steel relining for flues with cracked tiles, gaps, or no liner at all — sized to your appliance, insulated, done once.

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Chimney Leak Repair & Waterproofing

Finding where the water actually gets in — crown, cap, flashing, masonry or condensation — and fixing that, not caulking symptoms.

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And the rest of the system

Everything we do

Why chimneys fail here

Northeast Ohio is a freeze-thaw machine

Every winter, lake-effect moisture soaks into every open joint and hairline crack in your chimney — then freezes, expands about 9%, and pries the masonry apart. Dozens of cycles a season, every season, on the most weather-exposed masonry of the house. That's why Cleveland chimneys shed brick faces, why mortar goes sandy, and why the top of the stack always fails first.

It's also why water management is the whole game. A sound crown, a proper cap, tight flashing and healthy joints are the difference between a chimney that needs pointing once a decade and one that quietly becomes a rebuild. Our job is keeping you on the cheap side of that line.

Masonry repair Leaks & waterproofing

Snow-covered brick chimney with icicles under a grey lake-effect winter sky

Freeze-thaw does the demolition

Water in, freeze, expand, repeat. Spalled brick and open joints are winter damage in progress — cheapest the season they're caught.

The failures that matter are invisible

Cracked flue tiles and gapped liners can't be seen from the firebox or the ground. A camera up the flue is the only honest answer.

Creosote is the fire you're storing

Every cord of wood leaves fuel on the inside of your flue. A yearly sweep takes it back out — that's the entire logic of the trade.

How we work

Evidence first. Then the fix that actually matches it.

Look properly

Camera up the flue, eyes on the crown, cap, flashing and masonry. You get photographs of your own chimney — most owners have never seen the top of theirs.

Rank honestly

Every finding lands in one of three buckets: urgent, plan-for, or fine. No scare tactics — most of what we find gets scheduled, not panicked over.

Fix it once

The repair that matches the diagnosis — matched brick, correct mortar, right-sized liners — so you're not paying for the same fix twice in five years.

The NFPA 211 standard recommends every chimney be inspected at least once a year. If it's been longer than that — or you've never had it looked at — a camera inspection is the place to start. More on why we work this way.

The craft

What the work actually looks like

A chimney is brick, mortar, clay, steel and fire, and every one of them fails in its own way. Knowing which one you are looking at is the job.

Sweeping
Creosote out, dust contained, the flue left clear.
Inspection
A camera down the flue — cracks and gaps you cannot see from below.
Masonry
Joints cut back to sound mortar and repacked, not smeared over.
Relining
A continuous stainless liner, sized to the appliance it serves.
Crowns & caps
A sloped wash and a real drip edge, so water runs clear of the brick.
Fireplaces
Firebox, damper and smoke shelf — the parts you live with.

Our work

The same chimney, before and after

Eroded joints don’t get patched over. They get cut out and repacked — because water getting in at the top is what caused the damage further down.

A brick chimney stack with badly eroded mortar joints — deep gaps, missing mortar and open head joints between the bricks — Before — mortar eroded back, head joints open to the weather

The same brick chimney stack after repointing, with the joints cut out and refilled with fresh, fully packed mortar — After — the same stack, joints cut out and repacked

By community

Pick your town

36 communities across Northeast Ohio. Every one has its own page, because the chimneys are not the same from one town to the next.

Cleveland, OH

1890s–1950s stock across most neighborhoods: soft pre-war brick, unlined or clay-tile flues, doubles with multi-flue stacks, and utility chimneys serving furnaces and water heaters.

Lakewood, OH

Pre-1930 colonials, foursquares and doubles almost wall to wall — soft brick, original struck-mortar crowns, unlined flues, and stacks that have outlived several owners' memories of what they vent.

Cleveland Heights, OH

1910s–20s Tudors and colonials with multiple fireplaces and tall, detailed multi-flue stacks — architectural chimneys on slate roofs, over clay flues that frequently need relining.

Shaker Heights, OH

Planned-suburb 1920s architecture with prominent detailed chimneys — multi-fireplace houses, aging clay flues, slate roofs, and a neighborhood standard that makes matched masonry non-negotiable.

Parma, OH

Postwar bungalows, Capes and ranches — sturdy single stacks with cracked struck-mortar crowns, one badly weathered face, and thousands of orphaned water-heater flues corroding after furnace upgrades.

Rocky River, OH

Lake exposure accelerating everything — older masonry taking wind-driven rain on its north and west faces, and newer chase-built fireplaces with rusting galvanized covers.

Westlake, OH

Later-era housing with a high share of factory-built fireplaces — rusting chase covers, cracked refractory panels and metal flues that still need annual sweeping, plus conventional masonry in the older pockets.

Strongsville, OH

70s–90s colonials and later builds — thin original crowns reaching the end of their service life, stiff original dampers, exterior stacks that run cold, and a generation of fireplaces overdue a first camera inspection.

Euclid, OH

Snow-belt lake exposure on mixed-age stock — early-century streets with soft brick and unlined flues, postwar bungalows with failing crowns, and abandoned flues left open after heating conversions.

South Euclid, OH

1920s bungalows and colonials near Cedar Center alongside late-40s and 50s Capes and ranches toward Green Road — two building recipes, two failure profiles, often on the same block.

University Heights, OH

Tightly packed brick and frame colonials from a compressed build window around 1930 — matching builder details that are reaching the end of their service life on the same schedule, and a long history of surface patching.

Beachwood, OH

Postwar through modern housing where the chimney is often sound but the system is not — gas log conversions on unswept flues, tight houses with powerful exhaust equipment, and hard-weathered outdoor fireplaces.

Bedford, OH

Nineteenth-century Western Reserve houses around the old town center — narrow unlined stove flues, plastered-over thimbles hidden in walls, corbelled stacks with no footing, plus a postwar ring with conventional postwar chimneys.

Garfield Heights, OH

1920s–50s brick bungalows and Capes with warm interior stacks — decades of tar and roof-cement patching, leaks that surface at second-floor ceilings, and flues repurposed after heating conversions.

North Olmsted, OH

1950s–60s ranches, splits and Capes on shifting lake-plain clay, plus a wave of 70s and 80s family-room fireplaces — settling exterior stacks, short flues with draft problems, and masonry and factory-built systems on the same house.

Mentor, OH

Mostly 1960s–90s subdivision housing under serious snow-belt loading — ice damming at chimney flashing, missing crickets behind wide stacks, and caps and chase covers taking sliding snow every winter.

Willoughby, OH

A nineteenth-century downtown core plus decades of suburban growth, in a market where wood heat is genuinely used — a high concentration of stoves and inserts, many of them venting into oversized original flues.

Painesville, OH

A nineteenth-century county seat of Italianate and Queen Anne houses — tall exposed stacks that deteriorate from the top down, apartment conversions with layers of added flues, and balloon-framed walls with no firestopping.

Chardon, OH

A nineteenth-century square, older village housing and rural township properties in Ohio's heaviest snow belt — households that burn seriously, with heavy and often glazed deposits, plus outbuilding stoves that rarely get inspected.

Elyria, OH

A nineteenth-century county seat turned manufacturing town, built partly of the sandstone quarried in this county — stone that delaminates rather than crumbles, has usually been pointed too hard, and dries slowly in the river valleys.

Lorain, OH

Dense mill and harbor-era housing with an unusual concentration of 1920s rebuilding — small stacks with hollow-tile backup, open lake exposure from the north, and flues that have outlived several generations of heating equipment.

Avon Lake, OH

Open lakefront exposure with no shelter from the north — steady wind that beats chimney draft, houses under pressure that pull air back down unused flues, and converted seasonal cottages carrying year-round heating loads.

Medina, OH

A Victorian square and its nineteenth-century streets alongside three decades of new subdivisions — traditional tall masonry stacks on one side of town and unserviced sealed direct-vent gas appliances on the other.

Brunswick, OH

Split-levels, bi-levels and tract colonials from a fast 1960s–80s build-out — a high share of factory-built fireplaces on aging listed metal chimney systems, with long offset flue runs that are easy to sweep badly.

Akron, OH

Company-era and boom-era housing built fast in the rubber years — unlined coal-built flues, mortar carrying a century of sulfate attack with leaning and bowing stacks to show for it, and two-family conversions sharing undersized flues.

Cuyahoga Falls, OH

Older river-valley neighborhoods and postwar streets under a heavy mature canopy — blocked cap screens, permanently shaded masonry that never dries, tree-access animal entry, and draft affected by what is growing overhead.

Hudson, OH

Early Western Reserve houses of soft handmade brick and lime mortar with framing built into the stacks, alongside larger modern homes with multiple fireplaces — antique work that punishes modern materials and shortcuts.

Kent, OH

A downtown and campus ring of older houses long since divided into units — decommissioned flues sealed at the bottom and open at the top, appliances added across decades, and shared flues serving separate households.

Canton, OH

Manufacturing-era brick housing with chimneys that have been reconnected repeatedly over a century — improvised vent connectors in the basement, heating appliances on fireplace flues, and rough unparged smoke chambers.

Wooster, OH

Substantial Victorian and Queen Anne brick in a farm-country county seat, where most of the damage came from abrasive cleaning, paint and sealers rather than from weather — plus neglected secondary rear-wing stacks.

Warren, OH

Large industrial-era houses with several flues apiece alongside modest mill-era frame housing — repair economics that require honest triage, and a long history of flashing done quickly rather than properly.

Youngstown, OH

Dense mill-era frame housing on narrow lots with single interior stacks — cheap common brick used above the roofline where it weathers fastest, century-old flues never resized, and older gravity and space-heating appliances still in service.

Boardman, OH

Postwar ranches, splits and colonials with sound but hastily proportioned builder fireplaces — openings oversized for their flues, throat dampers that no longer fully open, and later changes to the opening that made it worse.

Sandusky, OH

A nineteenth-century town built of local limestone on an exposed bay — stone that punishes hard mortar, seasonally closed houses whose flues run at outdoor temperature all winter, and complicated flashing at bracketed cornices.

Mansfield, OH

Manufacturing-era housing in country where oil heat and original boiler systems are still in use — acidic oil soot that attacks the flue, coal-era stacks massively oversized for what now vents into them, and neglected draft regulators.

Ashland, OH

A small county seat and the farms around it, heated by propane and wood rather than a gas main — old unlined stove flues carrying modern appliances, and oversized masonry chimneys throttling efficient stoves.

FAQ

Questions we hear

Do you handle the whole chimney, or just sweeping?

The whole system — sweeping and camera inspections, masonry repair and rebuilds, stainless relining, crowns, caps, tuckpointing, leak repair, fireplace and damper work, and dryer vents. One crew, one person responsible, no hand-offs between a 'sweep company' and a 'masonry company.'

How fast can you come out?

Call and we'll give you a straight answer for this week — availability moves with the season. Call and tell us what the chimney's doing — if we're up on a roof, we'll call you back.

Do you charge for estimates?

Estimates on repair work are free. Diagnostic work that requires a camera up the flue is quoted as an inspection — and if repairs follow, you'll never pay to be told what we already showed you in photos.

Which areas do you cover?

Cleveland and the surrounding Cuyahoga County suburbs — Lakewood, Cleveland Heights, Shaker Heights, Parma, Rocky River, Westlake, Strongsville, Euclid and the communities around them. If you're near but not on that list, call; the answer is usually yes.

When should I book before winter?

Earlier than feels necessary. The first cold week of October fills every chimney calendar in Northeast Ohio at once, and masonry repairs need above-40°F weather to cure. Late spring through early fall is the smart window for both.

Get started

Tell us what the chimney's doing

Smoke smell, a leak after rain, a house you're buying, or just "it's been years" — a two-minute note is enough. We'll call or text back to schedule a look. Prefer talking? Call and tell us what the chimney's doing — if we're up on a roof, we'll call you back.

Call216-647-1882

Your chimney has been out in a Cleveland winter for decades. We take care of that.

One crew for the whole chimney

Chimney Sweep & Cleaning

Chimney Inspection

Chimney Repair & Rebuilds

Chimney Liner & Relining

Chimney Leak Repair & Waterproofing

And the rest of the system

Northeast Ohio is a freeze-thaw machine

Freeze-thaw does the demolition

The failures that matter are invisible

Creosote is the fire you're storing

Evidence first. Then the fix that actually matches it.

Look properly

Rank honestly

Fix it once

What the work actually looks like

Sweeping

Inspection

Masonry

Relining

Crowns & caps

Fireplaces

The same chimney, before and after

Our service area, drawn to scale

Pick your town

Cleveland, OH

Lakewood, OH

Cleveland Heights, OH

Shaker Heights, OH

Parma, OH

Rocky River, OH

Westlake, OH

Strongsville, OH

Euclid, OH

South Euclid, OH

University Heights, OH

Beachwood, OH

Bedford, OH

Garfield Heights, OH

North Olmsted, OH

Mentor, OH

Willoughby, OH

Painesville, OH

Chardon, OH

Elyria, OH

Lorain, OH

Avon Lake, OH

Medina, OH

Brunswick, OH

Akron, OH

Cuyahoga Falls, OH

Hudson, OH

Kent, OH

Canton, OH

Wooster, OH

Warren, OH

Youngstown, OH

Boardman, OH

Sandusky, OH

Mansfield, OH

Ashland, OH

Questions we hear

Tell us what the chimney's doing