Copse & Cinder Chimney Co. · Marlow Dene & the Whitmoor parishes · filed since 1987
Every chimney we touch gets a file. The file outlives the owners.
Copse & Cinder sweeps, scans and repairs flues around the Dene — and writes everything into a house file that began in 1987 and has never changed format: what we found, what we did, what it cost, what next season should look like. Buy a house in the Dene and the chimney comes with a biography.
Services & rates
The card, filed first
The same card every household sees before anyone climbs anything, and the invoice repeats it. NFPA 211 asks for a Level 1 look every burning year — creosote keeps no calendar but its own, and the file is how your chimney stays ahead of it.
Level 1 sweep & inspection$182
NFPA 211 annual — full brush, smoke test, graded card, filed same day
Level 2 camera scan$338
Every foot of flue on video — sales, fuel changes, after any flue fire
Damper plate, re-seated$138
Cleaned, freed, seated flat, handle replaced where gone
Top-sealing damper$660
Closes at the chimney top — supplied and fitted with the stainless cap
Crown rebuildfrom $675
Broken crown chipped to sound masonry, poured new with a drip edge
Rigid 316Ti reline$2,350–3,500
Insulated, terminated, draw-tested — quoted only from camera footage
The house file
A card per visit, a file per address, unbroken since 1987. The grade history sets your interval, the repair history names your weak spots, and the whole file belongs to the house — it hands over with the deeds, not the invoice.
The rod camera
Every foot of flue on video, defects measured to the millimetre. The scan is the only honest basis for a reline quote, and the footage files with the house — the next owner, the next insurer and the next sweep all read the same frames.
The manometer
Draft read in pascals before and after, on the card, in the file. A flue that sweeps clean but still will not draw is a diagnosis, not a mystery — and thirty-eight years of readings say which diagnosis, on which street, in which decade.
How it runs
A visit, from file to file
The same shape every call, whether the house is new to us or forty years deep in the cabinet. The only variable the file cannot settle is what the flue walls say today — and that is what the brush and the camera are for.
The booking
The file comes out
Street name, and the drawer opens: every card the house has ever generated, read back to you on the phone. New to the Dene? The file starts today, and it starts honest.
The visit
Sweep, grade, measure
Full brush on HEPA extraction, creosote graded degree by degree, draft read in pascals, damper plate and cap checked by name. Camera where the grade or the sale asks for it.
The table
The card is written
Found, done, cost, next season — the same five lines since 1987, priced off the card, signed by the sweep who did the work.
Same evening
The file grows
The card is photographed into the address file and the paper copy stays with you. Any repair it recommends is quoted from the card or the footage — never from memory.
Next season
The file answers
Your interval comes from your grades, not the average. When the house sells, the file goes to your solicitor with the deeds — around the Dene, agents have started listing it.
Marlow Dene & the Whitmoor parishes, 2025 — 2026
Filed this season
Six files from the cabinet, photographed the week they grew. Sweeps, scans and repairs alike — the cabinet does not distinguish.
Our buyers asked for the chimney’s history and our solicitor sent the Copse & Cinder file — thirty-one cards, four previous owners, every grade in the same format. The surveyor rang the office to confirm it was real, laughed down the phone, and passed the house the same afternoon. Two streets over, a near-identical sale stalled three weeks on a reline argument nobody had paperwork to settle. The file did more for that sale than the extension did.
Entry one: “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 triplicate. Dry wood since, and the grades have never come back.
The insurers questioned a claim after a flue fire at the old place. The office produced the file — every sweep, every grade, the glaze treatment card from two seasons prior — and the claim paid without another word. Other people’s chimneys turned out to be my chimney’s best defence.
We bought the house and inherited the file with it, which is the single most reassuring thing about the purchase. The first card they wrote us referenced the 1994 one — “plate re-seated then, holding” — and it was, because they checked.
Before you ring
File questions
The five the office phone answers every September. If yours is not here, the line runs seven to five, Dene-wide, and the answer goes in a file either way.
Does the file cost anything?
No. It is not a subscription or a database — it is how the shop has written its work since 1987, from card drawers to a photographed archive. You keep the paper copies; the cabinet keeps the history; nobody pays for either.
We are selling — what do buyers need?
A Level 2 camera scan with a report a solicitor can file, plus the house file if the address has one. Around the Dene the file has started appearing in listings, and it should: it is the one claim about a chimney that arrives with thirty-eight years of receipts.
Another firm swept ours — can you take over?
Gladly. Their cards enter the file as prior history with whatever they graded, and ours starts from a fresh look — half the file’s value is the unbroken run, and the other half is knowing exactly where our run started.
How often should we be swept, really?
Every burning year at minimum, and after that your file tailors it: your grades, your cords, your wood’s dryness. Two damp-cordwood seasons running and the cabinet brings the next visit forward before the third-degree card writes itself.
What happens to the file if you close?
It is kept by street, not by customer number, and the cards are the house’s property in everything but custody. A standing instruction, lodged with the solicitor who wrote it, hands the whole cabinet to the parish archive. Files should outlive shops; that is rather the point of them.
Filed visits inside the week, Dene and parishes wide · (555) 066-4172 · book@copseandcinder.example
Open your house file
Tell us the street and the hearth — if the address has a file, we will read it back to you on the phone. The Level 1 sweep and card is $182, filed same day, and the file belongs to the house, not to us. book@copseandcinder.example