Chimney Sweep & Repair in New Britain, CT
Cleaning, camera inspections and masonry repair for the Hardware City’s multi-family houses, West End homes and postwar capes, with photos and a written price before any work.
Sunday to Friday
A Class Chimney sweeps, inspects and repairs chimneys across New Britain, including the two- and three-family houses where one brick stack often carries several flues. The visit to look at your chimney and price the work is $59, and you get photos and a written estimate before anything starts. Call or request a callback to set it up.
New Britain houses and the chimneys that come with them
New Britain earned the nickname Hardware City from manufacturers such as The Stanley Works, and the neighborhoods around the factories filled with housing for the people who worked in them. A large share of that housing is two- and three-family frame houses from roughly the 1890s to the 1930s, set close together on streets near downtown and around Broad Street, the stretch locals call Little Poland.
The West End is a different picture. Curving around the west side of Walnut Hill Park, the Olmsted-designed park next to downtown, it has larger Colonial Revival, Foursquare and Tudor Revival houses built for business owners between the 1880s and the early 1900s, on deep lots with mature trees. And like every Connecticut city, New Britain added plenty of capes and ranches after the war.
Those three groups age in different ways. The multi-family houses usually have one stack doing a lot of work for several appliances. West End chimneys are tall and often still run on their original clay tile. Postwar houses tend to have a single chimney shared by the boiler and the water heater, with a fireplace flue beside it.
A walk-around checklist for two- and three-family owners
If you own or manage a multi-family house, you can check most of this from the yard and the basement without going near the roof. Our page on chimney service for landlords and multi-family homes covers shared flues and tenant access in more depth.
- Count what vents into the chimney: boiler or furnace, water heater, a first-floor fireplace, sometimes a second heating system for another unit
- Find out whether each appliance has its own flue or whether two share one
- Look for brown streaks or white powder on the brick near the top of the stack
- Check the top-floor walls and ceilings beside the chimney for stains after a heavy rain
- Look for brick faces that have flaked off, or mortar joints you can scrape out with a key
- Open the cleanout door at the base, if there is one, and look for fallen tile, water or debris
- Ask whether anyone checked the flue the last time a boiler or water heater was replaced
- Test the CO detectors on every floor, and confirm current rental-unit requirements with the city or your attorney
Chimney symptom checker
Tick what you have noticed and see what it usually means.
What New Britain chimneys usually need
Sweeping and a Level 1 check
A cleaning plus a look at the flue, smoke chamber and firebox, with a camera when the view from below is not enough. Details are on our cleaning and inspection page.
Relining heating flues
Cracked clay tile and a new, more efficient boiler are the two usual reasons a heating flue needs a stainless liner. See chimney liner and flue repair.
Spalled brick
Old city brick soaks up water, the water freezes, and the faces pop off. Catching it early means replacing a few bricks instead of a whole section; read about spalling brick repair.
One cap for several flues
On a stack with three or four flues, a single stainless cap over a sound crown keeps rain, leaves and squirrels out of all of them at once.
Repointing worn joints
Mortar on a century-old stack erodes long before the brick does. Raking out and refilling the joints, about $800 to $3,000+ as a ballpark, keeps water out of the core of the chimney.
Recent work: a partial chimney rebuild
The same chimney, during and after the work. The damaged top courses come down with the roof covered in tarps, then the top is rebuilt and finished with a new crown.
A blocked or broken heating flue can push carbon monoxide into the living space, and CO has no color or smell. If a CO alarm sounds or you see smoke inside, get everyone out and call 911 first. The boiler or furnace itself is serviced by a licensed heating technician; our part is the chimney it vents into.
How a New Britain visit works with A Class
This is the path from your first call to a finished job.
- You call or ask for a callbackTell us what you have noticed and how many units and appliances use the chimney, so the technician arrives with the right equipment.
- A free look at the chimneyWe check it from the roof, the firebox and the basement, and run a camera up any flue that needs a closer look.
- Photos of what we foundYou see the same pictures we do, including the top of the stack that cannot be seen from the sidewalk.
- A written priceBallpark ranges are on our chimney sweep cost page; your exact number is put in writing before any work is booked.
- Tidy workDrop cloths go down in every room we work in, and the area is cleaned before we leave.
Booking from New Britain and next door
Call (203) 779-6787 Sunday through Thursday from 7 AM to 8 PM, or Friday until 2:30 PM, or fill in the callback form. If tenants need notice before anyone enters their unit, tell us when you book so we can plan access.
On the tightly packed streets near downtown, a chimney can stand a few feet from the house next door. We work out ladder placement and any staging during the $59 inspection visit, so the work day goes smoothly for you and your neighbors.
We also work in the towns around the city, including Berlin, Newington and Plainville.
Prefer we call you?
Three quick taps and a real person from A Class Chimney calls you back to set up a $59 on-site inspection.
- $59 on-site visit and written estimate
- Photos of everything we find
- A written price before any work starts
- Licensed and insured in Connecticut
Sunday to Friday
What do you need?
When?
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Free, no obligation. Privacy
New Britain chimney questions
Chimney help in New Britain
$59 on-site visit, photos of what we find and a written price before any work. Licensed and insured in Connecticut.