Tallow & Ash Chimney Co. · Marrow Bend & the Oxgangs · every visit accounted since 1974
The ledger is the warranty. Nine thousand sweeps, every one written down.
Tallow & Ash sweeps, scans and repairs chimneys around the Bend — and types up every visit: what we found, what we did, what it cost, what next season needs. The books go back to Grandfather Tallow’s first rod, the reports read the same way now as then, and a chimney with a Tallow history sells faster for having one.
Services
The accounted card
01
The sweep — $189
Full brush behind a sealed hearth on HEPA extraction, smoke test, draft reading, and the creosote graded degree by degree on a typed card. NFPA 211 asks for it every burning year; the ledger keeps your personal history so the interval is yours, not the average’s.
02
The scan — $329, Level 2
A rod-mounted camera down every foot of flue, recorded and measured. Sales, fuel changes and after any flue fire are the law of it; before believing anybody’s reline quote is the sense of it. The footage files with your ledger entry, permanently.
03
The reline — rigid 316Ti, insulated
Where the camera shows clay past saving: old tiles out where the joints allow, insulated stainless dropped a section at a time, terminated and draw-tested before your first fire. Quoted only from footage, itemized to the fitting, entered in the ledger like everything else.
04
The masonry — crowns, chambers, pointing
Crowns poured with a drip edge, smoke chambers parged smooth with insulating castable, joints re-pointed in mortar matched to the original lime. The work the weather actually attacks, done by the same two hands that graded the flue.
Services & rates
The extras, same card
Prices from last quarter’s ledger entries, and the invoice repeats the card before it repeats itself. Nothing appears on a Tallow invoice that is not on the card first — the ledger and the bill are the same document, which is the entire idea.
Second flue, same visit$95
The full sweep treatment, discounted because the van is already parked
Stainless mesh capfrom $210
Fitted and screwed down — wired-on caps are how nests happen
Damper plate, re-seated$140
Cleaned, freed and seated flat; handle replaced where gone
Crown rebuildfrom $680
Chipped to sound masonry, poured new with a drip edge
Chamber pargingfrom $890
Corbelled brick smoothed with insulating castable
Draw test$0 with any visit
Smoke pencil and manometer readings, before and after
Burning out of control right now? Fire brigade first — then our 24-hour line, (555) 047-3346. A swept, graded flue is a flue that rarely needs it.
The ledger clause
Every visit gets a typed report within forty-eight hours, and every report enters the permanent ledger — so the next visit, the next owner, the next insurer reads your chimney’s whole history, not a sales pitch about its future. Fifty-one years of entries and not one rewritten.
Why the ledger matters
A chimney with a paper trail
A solicitor can read a Tallow ledger the way a mechanic reads a service book. Houses round the Bend sell faster with one, insurers ask fewer questions with one, and the visit that finds nothing is written down exactly like the visit that finds a cracked tile — because the honest entries are what make the worrying ones believable.
Marrow Bend & the Oxgangs, 2025 — 2026
Recent entries
Six ledger entries with their photographs, filed the week they happened. Sweeps, scans and repairs alike — the book does not distinguish.
Our buyer’s surveyor asked for the chimney history and we sent four years of Tallow reports — typed, dated, graded. He rang the office to confirm they were real, laughed, and passed the house the same afternoon. The ledger did more for that sale than the kitchen did.
Entry one: “flue sound, owner burns damp cordwood, expect second degree next year.” Entry two, next year: second degree, exactly as written. I have never been so impressed by being told off in a PDF. Dry wood since, and the grades have never come back.
The insurance questioned a claim after a flue fire at the old place. Tallow produced the ledger — every sweep, every grade, the treatment card from two seasons prior — and the claim paid without another word. Fifty years of other people’s chimneys turned out to be my chimney’s best defence.
The five the phone gets
Ledger questions
If yours is not here, the office line runs seven to five, Bend and Oxgangs, and the answer goes in the book either way.
What does the report actually contain?
The creosote grade run by run, the draft readings, the camera stills if it was a scan, what was done, what it cost, and what next season should look like — typed, dated, and filed in the ledger with a copy to your inbox within forty-eight hours.
Does the ledger cost anything?
No. It is not a subscription or a database — it is how the shop has written its work since 1974, translated from notebooks to typed reports. You get the copies; the book keeps the history; nobody pays for either.
We are selling — what do buyers need?
A Level 2 camera scan with a report written for a solicitor, and any ledger history the house has. Around the Bend, agents have started listing “Tallow file” the way they list a serviced boiler. The book makes the claim checkable, which is the whole trick.
How often should we be swept, really?
Every burning year at minimum, and the ledger tailors it after that: your grade history, your cords, your wood’s dryness. Two damp-cordwood seasons running and the book will bring the next visit forward before the third-degree entry writes itself.
Can you take over a chimney another firm swept?
Gladly — their cards go in as “prior history” with whatever they graded, and ours starts from a fresh camera pass. Half the ledger’s value is the unbroken run, and the other half is knowing exactly where the run started.
Ledger visits inside the week, Bend and Oxgangs wide · (555) 047-3346 · book@tallowandash.example
Start your chimney’s file
Tell us the house, the hearth and what you burn — prior paperwork from other firms welcome, it enters the book as history. The accounted sweep is $189 with the typed report in forty-eight hours, and the entry belongs to the house, not to us. book@tallowandash.example