WHY CHOOSE NECS? Expert, Careful, Friendly Chimney Service
Integrity driven | Fair prices | Family/Friendly Service | 5 Stars – Recommended by your neighbors, Facebook town groups, Yelp, Nextdoor etc without advertising or solicitation. In the Woburn, MA area since 1978.
Wait: read first! – Buyer Beware
If you have been solicited by another company – even with a name similar to ours – it is NOT us. We will never call to pester you with offers of an “in the neighborhood special”. Check our list of towns.
Services
Our business philosophy?
SERVICES
WHAT WE DO BEST
Pricing for cleanings and other services can be found in our FAQ section below. Contact us if you have questions about a service we may have missed.
Chimney Cleaning
Having your chimney cleaned by Northeast Chimney Sweeps is a new experience.
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Northeast Chimney Sweeps cleans a chimney slower than anyone! While our competitors dash in and out of your home in 45 minutes, we allow up to two hours between our appointments.
This allows us to assess your chimney’s needs, carefully protect our work area, and thoroughly accomplish a proper and complete chimney cleaning. How else could we claim, truthfully, to be the best chimney sweep in Woburn, Arlington, Burlington, Lexington, Reading, Stoneham, Wakefield, Wilmington, Winchester, MA and New England; maybe even the country?
Our reputation is best seen where people are searching for the best chimney sweep in Massachusetts; Yelp, NextDoor, Angie’s List, Arlington List, Lexington List, Boston Consumers’ Checkbook, Belmont List and so many others.
Chimneys are cleaned on a periodic basis based upon use, type of chimney and type of fuel burned. A cleaning will remove soot, creosote, debris fallen from outside and particles fallen in from deteriorating flue walls.
Cleaning the chimney clears the flue passage of obstructions to draft, decreasing the possibility of a carbon monoxide spillage into the home. Chimney cleaning can also remove flammable deposits like soot and creosote from flue walls, decreasing the potential of a chimney fire.
People ask us all the time, “How often do we get our chimney flues cleaned?” Our rules of thumb for chimney cleaning frequency are as follows:
Wood burning stove flue: Every 1 year
Wood burn fireplace flue: Every 1-3 years
Oil burner flue: Every 5 years
Gas furnace flue (no stoves/inserts): Every 5-10 years.
Animal/Rain Caps
One of our most common services is the installation of stainless steel caps; for the prevention of rain and animal entry.
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Most often customers choose stainless steel chimney caps while often those with older, more ornate homes, copper chimney caps.
Use our request form to schedule a chimney cap price quotation.
Having an animal in your chimney when uncapped is no small thing.
We recommend a chimney cap for all chimneys to cover all flues. See it as insurance from the drama that may follow if an animal were to become trapped in your chimney at a time when the heat would go on for the heating season or the hot water heater.
Did you know that because of the warmth generated up the gas flue from a gas water heater chimney, a mother animal might chose to have her babies in the flue? Imagine the emotional impact and mess that would create.
See our pricing in the FAQ section below.
Chimney Inspections
Two of our most frequent questions have to with whether or not we do inspections and if they are free.
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The answers are below.
Comprehensive Inspections:
Payment due at time of inspection
Inside access required.
- Expedited Real Estate Sale Inspection ($450) – email report issued within 24 hours.
- Comprehensive inspection ($400) – email report issued within 7 – 10 business days. $100 is credited towards work done within 90 days of written proposal.
- Interior Repair Inspection ($200) – for a specific interior repair estimation that requires a set appointment time slot, to meet with you and for interior access to the home. This is only for 1 item and not a full service inspection.
- Verification for City Inspector ($150) – This is for one purpose only; to provide proof of inspection of one newly installed appliance; in order to satisfy town inspector. Nothing else is inspected at this appointment. This is only for new heating appliance such as a gas fired water heater or boiler. *
* Note that flue and appliance installation must be in satisfactory condition in order to receive a passing inspection report. We will otherwise offer measures to correct any defects.FYI and Report schedule:Written receipt and basic condition report provided at time of inspection, as applicable.
Detailed report with recommendations and pricing will follow via email from our office.
Inspection performed from rooftop, cellar, fireplace(s).
Masonry
Having your chimney cleaned by We provide small to medium masonry repair services.
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For more complex projects requiring scaffolding and / or staging, we are glad to assist you with a recommendation for a trusted masonry contractor, in your area.
Some services are seasonal only.
Stainless Steel Chimney Liner Systems
A chimney liner is a complete single-flue smoke & exhaust venting system.
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Chimney lining is our most expensive service. On the other hand, a new stainless steel liner system is completely installed in one day with no mess and little disruption to the customer’s daytime routine. Once installed, it provides a permanent correction to a worn-out flue, truly making your chimney new on its important side, the inside!
Stainless Steel Chimney Liner prices – $2100 – 3200 including installation
(Sorry, at this time we do not provide lining services for open fireplaces.)
We calculate the price of each stainless steel chimney liner based upon many factors, each unique to every home. Primary criteria that we consider will relate to a chimney liner’s diameter (5, 6, 7, 8” round). Taking your heating system’s BTU rating into account we calculate the correct size liner pipe, and then factor in other variables such as chimney height, roof access, difficulty of installation, number of appliance connections, etc. This gives us the complete chimney liner cost.
We work hard to ensure two things: that our liner installation will perform right upon first installation, and that what we have completed will be easy to maintain for future service personnel. As a final consideration on price, please note that some of our competitors will offer a lower priced liner. We distinguish our projects by doing neat and careful work, using top-quality components, not flimsy knock-off brands. We properly prepare your chimney prior to installation so we can present a completed project with no compromise and no need for apologies.
Is there another option?
Most customers quickly understand the importance of having a strong and healthy path through which their heating system can “exhale”, but some still wonder if there is another way to return their flue to health. Well, there is another option. Your chimney has given 40, 50 or more years of service. If you would like to return it to its original condition, it can be entirely torn down and rebuilt brick by brick, clay liner by clay liner.
As you may have guessed, this alternative is impractical, messy, time consuming, and as much as 15 times more expensive than to reline. It is an alternative chosen by no one.
Waterproofing
Our prices typically run from $85 –$400, depending on the square footage of surface area.
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We at Northeast Chimney Sweeps look at over a thousand chimneys each year. Across the board, we see chimney leaks coming from five main sources:
1. Lack of a chimney cap
2. Open mortar joints
3. Flashing / roofing weaknesses
4. Penetration of water through the exposed brick or chimney surface which leads to saturation of the brick / mortar mass
5. Water vapor from high efficiency heating system condenses back to water droplets before escaping the chimney
Answers to those issues are:
1. Installation of a cap
2. Brick and mortar repair
3. Flashing / roof repair
4. Waterproofing of the exposed brick or crown surface
5. Installation of stainless steel flue liner
Water leaks are the most difficult chimney problems we are asked to solve. However, finding correction to water infiltration is important in order to prevent serious chimney interior damage. We always try to start with the most obvious penetration point, and then also make suggestions beyond in case that is not the complete answer to the problem.
It is always nice if the main problem has an easy and cheap solution, and sometimes that is how it works out. For some other chimneys, water intrusion issues are more complex and difficult to solve.
It is important to note that we base our waterproofing technique recommendations, in part, upon what we observe during our visit to the client’s home. We also listen to what our clients report to us about what they have observed during their experience with the leaky chimney. What we then recommend will be in response to all of the collected data. We have had great success in solving hundreds of water leaks into chimneys. However, please note that while we stand behind every service that we provide in terms of quality of materials and installation, we do not promise to solve every water leak. Due the complexity of water penetration issues into homes, we are precluded from doing so. In comparison, we can easily promise to unplug a blocked chimney flue with no uncertainty because we are able to observe a blockage and then later observe that the flue has been fully cleared. Because of the complexity of water leaks, we only promise to faithfully execute the waterproofing methods that we have offered to perform. We suggest that prospective clients with leaky chimneys contact our office. Our Inspection, together with your reported observations, can help to formulate a logical and effective waterproofing plan.
Waterproofing runs $300 – $1000 depending upon several factors.