Meet the Team
North Hills is where we work every day. That means we know its homes — how they are built, how they are lived in, and what tends to go wrong in them.
North Hills is mostly postwar tract housing with later infill, so we see two different chimneys on the same street. Anything built before 1980 usually has a masonry fireplace with clay flue tiles, a brick or block stack, and a mortar crown that has been baking in the sun for fifty years. The newer tracts, condos and the remodels done in the last thirty years have factory-built prefab fireboxes with metal class-A chimneys running up a framed chase. Then there are the gas conversions. South Coast AQMD rules bar wood-burning hearths in new construction and issue winter no-burn days, which has pushed thousands of households in the San Fernando Valley and the wider LA basin to gas logs and sealed gas inserts, and a lot of those conversions sit on abandoned or improperly sealed flues with the damper welded or clamped open. We work on all three types: open masonry, sealed gas inserts, and prefab. We do sweeping, inspection, caps, liners, flues, fireboxes and gas fireplace service. We do not do masonry or brickwork, and we will say so up front rather than take the job and subcontract it.
The burning season here is short, so chimneys degrade more from sitting idle, from sun and seismic movement, than from heavy creosote loading. That changes what the calls look like. In fall we get crown and crown-seal cracking from UV and thermal cycling, mortar crown separation and flue tile offset after seismic movement, rust on dampers and chase covers where winter rain has been funneling in, and nesting. Birds and rodents move into a flue that goes unused nine months of the year, and the first fire of the season is how most people find out. Foothill and brush-adjacent properties need a spark arrestor cap under California fire code, and those caps are often missing, flattened or rusted through. The crew shows up with the rod-and-brush set, a vacuum and drop cloths for the inside work, and a camera to run up the flue so you can see the tile joints, the liner condition and the smoke chamber instead of taking our word for it. For gas work we bring the manometer, the gas tools and the parts common to Heatilator, Heat & Glo, Majestic, Napoleon, Superior and Empire units.
Plenty of homes here need an ann
We cover North Hills and the surrounding towns. If you're in one of these areas and have
a chimney sweep problem, call us. We usually get out the same day.
"Does this actually need fixing, or can it wait a season?" That is the question we get most. It is a fair question. North Hills chimneys rarely fail from creosote. The burning season is short across the San Fernando Valley. Sun and rain cause most of the damage. Seismic movement adds to it. So we judge by condition, not by soot volume. Our first call is usually inspection, not sweeping. A flue with light ash and a sound liner gets left alone. We say so plainly. What we look at harder: crown cracks from UV and thermal cycling, flue tile joints offset by ground movement, chase covers rusted where winter rain pools, and rodent or bird nesting in flues idle nine months a year. Repair wins when the structure is sound and the damage is at the top. Crown seal and flashing. A code-compliant spark arrestor cap too. Replacement enters the conversation when liner tiles have shifted, or when a prefab firebox panel is cracked through. Prefab units are matched systems. Mixing parts is not a repair. Gas conversions get extra scrutiny. South Coast AQMD no-burn days pushed many households to logs and sealed inserts. We check whether the old flue was properly sealed and whether the damper was clamped open correctly. Often it was not.
Call us at (818) 214-8207.
We'll tell you the price before we start. You can also reach us through the
contact page if you'd rather send a message.
Our service area
How we decide what to recommend in North Hills