Services & rates
The card, written first
Every household gets the same written card before anyone climbs anything, and the invoice repeats it line for line. NFPA 211 asks for a Level 1 look every burning year — creosote keeps no calendar but its own, and the card is how you keep ahead of it.
Level 1 sweep & inspection$179
NFPA 211 annual — full brush behind a sealed hearth, smoke test, graded written card
Level 2 camera scan$329
Every foot of flue on video — sales, fuel changes, or after any flue fire
Damper plate, re-seated$140
Throat damper cleaned, hinges freed, plate seated flat, handle replaced where gone
Top-sealing damper$660
Closes at the chimney top like a biscuit tin — supplied and fitted with the stainless cap
Crown rebuildfrom $680
Broken crown chipped back to sound masonry and poured new, with a proper drip edge
Tuckpointfrom $28 / sq ft
Joints ground out and re-pointed in mortar matched to the valley’s original lime
How it goes
The first visit, knock to card
The same sequence on every job — the only variable is your project.
The knock
Runners and sheets
Floor covered hearth to door, HEPA vacuum running before the first rod goes up — the room should look untouched when we leave, and mostly it does.
The brush
Pass after pass
Rod-and-brush to the termination, again and again, until the flue walls show bare clay tile or bare liner. What comes down is bagged and graded on the spot.
The look
Lamp, then camera
The damper plate, the smoke chamber, the shelf — checked by name, camera where the lamp cannot reach. Second-degree plates and hairline cracks announce themselves here or not at all.
The card
Found, done, graded
Creosote degree, draft reading, what was done, what next season needs — written at the kitchen table, priced off the card, dated and signed.
Counted since 1979
The valley ledger
Every sweep in the shop book, honest ones included — the cards that read “clean, see you next autumn” are the entries we are proudest of.
Halden Mill & the Sable Valley, 2025 — 2026
Recent flues
Six jobs from the last year, photographed from the roof and the firebox. The card in the picture is the card the household kept.
The autumn card fills by the first cold Monday — book the sweep before the first fire. (555) 041-2265 · sweeps@rookerychimney.example
The valley says
Kept warm, kept honest
Three firms told this house it wanted a reline. Rookery brushed it, graded it first degree, re-seated a damper plate that had been stuck since the eighties, and wrote the whole thing on a card I could read in a minute. $319, all in, and the room stopped smelling of every fire since the war.
The Level 2 scan at our sale found one cracked tile at the thimble and a starling nest above the shelf. Tile, nest, cap — and the video went to the buyer’s surveyor the same evening. The sale closed on Rookery’s report and nobody argued with a frame of it.
Grandad had this chimney swept by the firm before Rookery had the name. Same card, same price on the invoice as on the card, same bloke sweeping who did my parents’ place. In this trade that is the whole review.
Before the first fire
Straight answers
The five the shop phone answers every September. If yours is not here, the line runs seven to five, valley-wide.
How often does a chimney honestly need sweeping?
Every burning year — NFPA 211’s rule, and the valley’s weather agrees with it. A cord of seasoned hardwood lays down about an eighth of an inch of first-degree creosote; green or softwood doubles that. Your card carries your grade and your own interval, not a brochure’s.
What are the three creosote degrees?
First degree is flaky soot and brushes out. Second degree has hardened into shiny plates and gets the rotary head. Third degree is glazed tar — the fuel a chimney fire feeds on — and gets chemical treatment with a camera follow-up, because brushing glaze only polishes it. The card names the degree, every time.
Level 1, 2 or 3 — which one is mine?
Level 1 is the annual look with no tools beyond the brush. Level 2 is the camera scan, required at any sale, fuel change or after a flue fire. Level 3 opens masonry to reach what even the camera cannot, and is scoped only from what Level 2 filmed — rarer than the trade makes it sound.
My fireplace smells of last winter in July. Why?
Warm humid air falls down a cool flue and carries creosote odour back into the room — usually through a damper plate that no longer seats. Re-seating the plate is $140 and fixes most of it; a top-sealing damper closes the chimney like a biscuit tin and fixes nearly all of the rest.
Do you sell relines?
We install them — rigid 316Ti stainless, insulated, draw-tested — when the footage says the flue cannot be saved any other way. But the camera decides, you watch it decide, and four scans in five leave with the original flue and a clean bill. A firm that always finds a reline is not reading, it is selling.
The estate agent’s inspector wanted a full reline written into the purchase — four thousand and a fortnight of delay. Rookery put the camera down instead: one cracked tile at the thimble, a nest on the shelf, a damper plate seized open since who knows when. Tile replaced, nest cleared, plate seated, cap fitted — done for under six hundred, and the footage closed the argument. The card hangs in the deed drawer to this day.
Get the card on the table
Tell us the house, the hearth, and when anyone last went up it — old paperwork welcome, we read it. The Level 1 sweep and card is $179, the Level 2 scan is $329 with the footage yours, and the card is written either way. sweeps@rookerychimney.example