Level 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.
Before
After
Before
After
Before
AfterChimney Cleaning Services in Brooklyn, NY
Brooklyn’s chimneys aren’t like the ones you’ll find in most of the country. They’re older, built tighter to the neighbor’s stack, and a lot of them started life burning coal before being adapted for oil, then gas. That’s a lot of history inside a flue, and most of it needs a careful look. Wendell Pike and the crew at Top Hat Chimney clean and inspect Brooklyn chimneys the way they were built to be handled - one flue at a time, with the camera footage to prove what’s actually in there. Call (516) 289-9316 and you’ll get a live person on the phone, not a call center. If you’re in Park Slope, Bed-Stuy, Crown Heights, Fort Greene, or anywhere else in the borough, we know the buildings you live in and we know what hides in those flues.
What happens when you call
- 1
A real person answersNo phone trees - you reach a local pro.
- 2
You get an upfront price rangeHonest numbers before anyone is dispatched.
- 3
A background-checked tech heads outLicensed & insured, dispatched right away.
- 4
You approve before work beginsNothing starts until you say go.
Why Brooklyn Homeowners Choose Top Hat Chimney
Most of the calls we get from Brooklyn start the same way: a homeowner just bought a brownstone or a row house, the previous owner said the chimney was “fine,” and now there’s a draft, a smell, or a fireplace that won’t draw. Wendell started this company in 1999, and the same thing that brought people to us then is what brings them now - you get a name you can verify, a license you can look up, and a crew that shows up in uniform with a real arrival window. We serve the dense blocks of Bed-Stuy and Fort Greene every week, and the sweeping crews know those attached masonry stacks well enough to explain what’s happening in your flue before the camera even goes up. Homeowners in Park Slope and Carroll Gardens also call us because we publish our pricing before a single tool comes off the truck. The number you hear on the phone is the number on the invoice. And every job is backed by the 90-Day Done Right Promise in writing. If it’s not right, one call brings Wendell back.
Chimney Cleaning Services We Offer in Brooklyn
Chimney Cleaning & Sweep
A proper sweep removes creosote, soot, and the debris that’s accumulated since the last time anyone looked. In Brooklyn’s pre-war housing stock, that debris often includes collapsed mortar, old bird nests, and pieces of a liner that gave up decades ago. We run a camera through every flue after the brush work so you see exactly what we saw.
Learn more about our Chimney Cleaning & Sweep in Brooklyn.
Chimney Repair
Crumbling brick, open mortar joints, cracked crowns - Brooklyn’s salt air and freeze-thaw winters work on masonry year-round. We repair what’s broken and tell you plainly when something can safely wait. You’ll never get a “recommendation” without camera evidence to back it up.
Learn more about our Chimney Repair in Brooklyn.
Fireplace Services
Whether the fireplace in your brownstone was just reopened after sixty years behind plaster or it’s been burning every winter, the first question is the same: does that flue actually breathe? We inspect, clean, diagnose draft problems, and work with quality parts when something needs to be rebuilt or replaced.
Learn more about our Fireplace Services in Brooklyn.
Chimney Cap & Crown
The crown is the concrete top that seals the stack, and the cap is the metal cover that keeps rain, leaves, and birds out. Brooklyn’s south- and west-facing chimneys toward the harbor take the worst of the weather, and a bad crown or a missing cap is the fastest way to turn a solid flue into a water-damaged one. We install and replace both, using hardware from names like Gelco and Olympia Chimney.
Learn more about our Fireplace Services in Brooklyn.
Chimney Liner & Rebuild
Many Brooklyn flues were built for coal and never properly relined when the building converted to gas. That’s a code issue and a safety issue - gas exhaust needs a correctly sized, intact liner to carry it out. We rebuild and reline chimneys using DuraFlex, HeatShield, and other trusted systems, and we show you the camera footage before and after.
Learn more about our Chimney Repair in Brooklyn.
Neighborhoods We Serve in Brooklyn
We work all across the borough, but most of our days are spent knocking on doors in the neighborhoods where Brooklyn’s oldest housing is thickest. If you’re in one of these areas, we’ve likely swept a flue on your block already:
- Park Slope
- Bedford-Stuyvesant (Bed-Stuy)
- Crown Heights
- Fort Greene
- Carroll Gardens
- Bushwick
Typical response time in Brooklyn is within a day or two for a cleaning appointment, and we’ll call you with a real arrival window the morning of the visit. If something shifts, we call you. That’s the whole arrangement.
Why Brooklyn’s Climate & Housing Affect Chimney Cleaning
Brooklyn sits on a peninsula with Upper New York Bay on one side, the East River on another, and the open Atlantic a few miles south. That means salt in the air, and salt works its way into old brick and mortar faster than you’d think. Chimney faces pointed toward the harbor - south and west exposures especially - show spalling brick and rusted caps earlier than the same materials would inland. Add Brooklyn’s winter freeze-thaw cycles, where water seeps into a cracked crown one week and freezes into ice the next, and you get the kind of progressive masonry damage that a visual inspection from the sidewalk simply won’t catch. That’s why we put a camera up every single time. Your flue doesn’t care how the fire looks. It cares how it breathes.
Then there’s the housing stock itself. Most of Brooklyn’s residential blocks in Park Slope, Bed-Stuy, Crown Heights, Fort Greene, and Carroll Gardens are lined with attached brownstones and brick row houses built between the 1880s and 1920s. Those buildings share masonry chimney stacks wall-to-wall with the property next door, and a single stack often serves multiple dwellings across two or more properties. That means a chimney cleaning in Brooklyn is rarely just “your” chimney. It’s a stack that might run through your neighbor’s house, with flues that belong to one boiler and two fireplaces split across a property line. We coordinate access, we know what questions to ask about shared stacks, and we document everything so you’re not left holding liability for a flue that was never yours to begin with.
And one more Brooklyn-specific pattern we see constantly: in Bed-Stuy, Bushwick, and East Flatbush, countless fireplaces were plastered over or boarded shut back in the 1950s and ’60s when oil heat came in. In the last decade, gut renovations have reopened those original fireplaces - and the flues behind them haven’t been swept or inspected in sixty or seventy years. We regularly find collapsed liner fragments, generations of bird nesting, and a dust fall of old mortar packed in there. The new owner just sees a charming original fireplace. The camera shows a flue that can’t safely vent anything without a full reline. Catching that before your first fire is the difference between a cozy evening and a smoke-filled parlor floor.
Pricing for Chimney Cleaning in Brooklyn
We quote upfront pricing before any work begins, and the number we give you on the phone is the number on the invoice. No door-knock surprises. Here’s what Brooklyn homeowners can typically expect:
- Standard chimney cleaning and inspection: $189-$289, depending on flue count and roof access.
- Cleaning with camera inspection report: included in the standard price - we don’t charge extra to show you what’s in there.
- Chimney cap replacement (supply and install): $225-$475, depending on cap size and material.
- Crown repair or reseal: $350-$850, depending on the extent of cracking.
- Stainless steel liner installation or reline: $1,800-$4,500, based on flue height, diameter, and roof access difficulty.
Every quote includes the camera work and a plain-English verdict. We’ll tell you what needs doing now and what can wait. And remember: $40 off any repair over $200, and 10% off always for seniors and veterans. Call (516) 289-9316 for an exact quote - estimates are free.
Service Area - Cities Near Brooklyn
If you’re just outside Brooklyn, we cover the surrounding neighborhoods too. See our work in Ridgewood, Howard Beach, and Red Hook for service details in those areas.
Serving Brooklyn, NY - Our Local Coverage Area
We’re based in the Brooklyn 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 Chimney Cleaning in Brooklyn
Most standard cleanings in Brooklyn run between $189 and $289, depending on the number of flues and how hard the roof access is. Attached row house stacks sometimes require roof access through a hatch or a party wall, which affects the quote. The price you hear on the phone is the price on the invoice - no add-ons after the fact. Call (516) 289-9316 and we’ll give you a firm number before anyone climbs a ladder.
Once a year, burn or no burn. Chimneys break in the off-season too, and Brooklyn’s freeze-thaw winters will work on any small crack in a crown or mortar joint until it’s a big one. Annual sweeping catches creosote before it becomes a glaze, and it catches water damage before the liner fails. For Brooklyn’s attached row houses, an annual camera check is even more important when a stack is shared with a neighbor.
You may or may not need one - but you should never take anyone’s word for it without seeing the camera footage. Many Brooklyn flues were built for coal and never properly relined for gas, which is a code violation and a real safety problem. But a cracked clay tile doesn’t always mean a full reline. We show you exactly what the camera sees and explain in plain English what it means. No liner recommendation is ever made without evidence you can look at yourself. That’s the whole point of the 90-Day Done Right Promise: if it’s not right, Wendell comes back.
First-degree creosote is a brush job. Third-degree is a glaze - catch it early. Skipping years in Brooklyn adds another layer: salt air and freeze-thaw cycles keep working on the masonry, and a small crown crack becomes a water leak that rots out the liner from the inside. By the time you smell dampness in the parlor, the repair bill has likely tripled. Annual cleaning is the cheap insurance against a chimney fire and a full rebuild.
Absolutely, and we see a lot of these. In Bed-Stuy, Bushwick, and East Flatbush especially, fireplaces that were boarded over in the 1950s and ’60s are being reopened during renovations, and the flue behind them hasn’t been touched in sixty or seventy years. We’ll clean what’s cleanable, run the camera, and tell you honestly whether the flue is safe to use or needs a reline before you burn a single log. No sugarcoating, no unnecessary work. Call (516) 289-9316 and we’ll walk you through what’s involved.
Get Your Brooklyn Chimney Cleaned - Call Top Hat Chimney Today
If you own a brownstone, a row house, or any home with a chimney in Brooklyn, don’t wait for the smell of smoke to tell you something’s wrong. Wendell Pike and the crew at Top Hat Chimney have been cleaning and repairing the borough’s oldest flues for decades. Call (516) 289-9316 and talk to a live person, get a firm quote, and schedule your cleaning. We’ll show up in uniform, give you a real arrival window, and put the camera footage in front of you before we recommend a single thing. That’s how it should work. It’s how we’ve always done it.
Written by Wendell Pike, Owner at Top Hat Chimney, serving Brooklyn and the surrounding communities since 1999.
What happens when you call
- 1A real person answersNo phone trees - talk to a local chimney cleaning pro.
- 2You get an upfront price rangeHonest numbers before anyone is dispatched. No surprises.
- 3We come out and measureLicensed & insured, at a time that suits you - the visit and the quote are both free.
- 4You get the price in writingLine-itemed, yours to keep, and nothing starts until you say go.
What Brooklyn Customers Say
"We bought a house with a fireplace nobody had touched in a decade. He ran a camera up it, found a cracked liner tile, and told me plainly not to light a fire until it was fixed. He could have swept it, taken the money and said nothing."
- Marcus Elderidge"The cap had blown off in a storm and birds had got in. He cleared the nest, fitted a proper stainless cap with a screen, and did it the same week I called."
- Rosalind Achebe"Gave me the photos from inside the flue on a memory stick along with the invoice. I have never had a trade hand me evidence before."
- Priscilla Ng