Frequently Asked Questions

We arrive with a tarp, a rotary brush sized to your flue, a HEPA vacuum, and a camera. The fireplace gets sealed off so no dust enters your living room. The flue is brushed from the top down or bottom up, depending on your roof access. Then the smoke chamber, damper and firebox are cleaned by hand. The camera goes up when we're finished, and you watch the feed. Total time in a typical Passaic home is 60 to 90 minutes.

Most Passaic chimneys take between 60 and 90 minutes to clean and inspect. If there's heavy creosote, a glaze that needs the chemical treatment, or a bird nest to remove, it can run two hours. We don't rush the job to move to the next one. The brush speed depends on what we find. Wendell Pike has been known to spend extra time on an older Passaic flue just to make sure the liner isn't hiding a problem behind a year of buildup.

No, not when the job is done right. We seal off the fireplace opening before any brushing starts, and we run a HEPA vacuum the entire time we're working. We lay drop cloths from the door to the hearth, and our shoes stay covered. You should be able to leave the coffee table where it is. If a Passaic homeowner ever finds dust after one of our sweeps, we come back and make it right.

Once a year, burn or no burn. Chimneys break in the off-season too. Passaic winters are cold enough that fireplaces get heavy use from November through March, and that's exactly when creosote accumulates fastest. Even if you only burn ten fires a season, the soot from those fires sits in your flue all summer, hardening. Annual cleaning keeps first-degree creosote from becoming third-degree glaze, which is the difference between a brush job and a major liner repair.

Gas fireplaces need less frequent sweeping than wood, but they still need attention. Gas produces acidic byproducts that can corrode flue liners and metal components over time. We recommend a gas chimney check every two years in Passaic, more often if you run it nightly through the winter. The inspection is quick, and it catches venting problems that can push carbon monoxide back into the room. That's the one you don't skip.

Top Hat Chimney serves Passaic and the surrounding Bergen and Passaic county towns: Clifton, Bloomfield, Belleville, Garfield, Nutley, Lyndhurst, Elmwood Park, Rutherford, North Arlington, East Rutherford and Glen Ridge. Wendell Pike lives in the service area, not three counties away. When you call (551) 368-8859, you're calling a local operation whose truck you'll see around town, not a call center that dispatches from another state.

We install and service parts from manufacturers we trust to hold up in the Passaic climate. Gelco caps and dampers, Olympia Chimney liners, Famco venting components, and Copperfield accessories all show up regularly in our work. We stock common sizes and order the rest quickly. The brand matters less than the fit, so we match the part to your flue dimensions and your burn habits, not to whatever's on the truck.

Yes, and in Passaic you should have both. A quality cap keeps rain, snow, leaves and animals out of a flue that would otherwise sit open all year. A top-sealing damper stops warm air from escaping up the chimney between fires, which is real money on your heating bill. We install Gelco and Copperfield caps and dampers, sized to your flue. You'd be surprised how many Passaic chimneys we find with no cap at all.

A properly installed stainless liner from a brand like Olympia Chimney will last 20 years or more in a typical Passaic home. Clay tile liners can last 50 years if the chimney is well maintained, but they crack with age and hard freeze-thaw cycles. Passaic's winters are exactly the kind that stress old clay tile. The camera inspection we do with every cleaning tells you whether your liner is still doing its job or quietly letting heat and gases where they shouldn't go.

We repair and replace chimney caps throughout Passaic. In most cases, a damaged cap is more cost-effective to replace than repair, and we quote you both ways. Gelco and Copperfield make the caps we install most often, because they hold up to Northeast winters and don't rust out after three seasons. A good cap is cheaper than a new liner, and a lot cheaper than water damage in your firebox. That's the math behind every cap we install.

Every pro working under the Top Hat Chimney name is required to hold the license and insurance their state requires. For New Jersey, that means the business carries general liability insurance and workers' compensation coverage, and any masonry or liner work is performed to local code. We're happy to show documentation before we start work at your Passaic home. Ask when you call (551) 368-8859; there's no reason to wait until we're on your roof.

Wendell Pike is the owner and the face of Top Hat Chimney in Passaic. He publishes his name, his address and his license number, and he answers his own phone. That's not a marketing line; it's how the business runs. When you call about a sweep in Passaic, you're talking to someone who knows the chimneys on your street. The sweep in the top hat is the oldest good-luck figure in the trade, and Wendell actually wears one to the door.

A handyman can brush a flue. What he can't do is spot a cracked liner, a failing damper, or a fire hazard hiding behind creosote buildup. Chimney work in Passaic involves fire safety, carbon monoxide risk and structural masonry, and the person doing it needs to understand all three. A trained sweep documents what he finds, repairs to code, and stands behind the work. Your flue doesn't care how the fire looks. It cares how it breathes, and so should the person cleaning it.

A chimney fire, visible smoke in the house, falling bricks or mortar, water pouring into the firebox after rain, or a strong odor that arrives suddenly all count as emergencies. If you see flames above your chimney top or hear a roar like a freight train, call 911 first, then call us. For everything else: if your Passaic home smells like campfire when you haven't burned in weeks, that's often water mixing with creosote, and it's worth a call to (551) 368-8859 the same week, not the same hour.

Yes, and you'd be surprised how often it happens. Squirrels, raccoons and birds all see an open Passaic chimney as a hollow tree with better weather. We remove the animal humanely where the law allows, clean out the nest material (which is a serious fire hazard), and install a cap so it doesn't happen again. If we find an animal that's protected, we work with local wildlife rules to get it out safely. No animal, no nest, no repeat visit next spring.

Stop using the fireplace immediately and call us. Chimney fires can burn hot enough to crack a liner, warp a damper, or damage the mortar joints between flue tiles, and you won't see any of that from the living room. We'll run the camera up the flue and show you the damage or tell you you're in the clear. Either way, you'll know. A chimney fire in Passaic isn't something to shrug off. The next fire you build could be the one that finds the crack.

Ninety days in writing on every chimney job, and one call brings Wendell Pike back. If something isn't right with the work, we fix it. If you're not satisfied with the cleaning, we redo it. That guarantee is stamped on every job we do in Passaic, and it's been part of how Top Hat Chimney operates since the beginning. The promise is simple: we'd rather keep you for twenty years than win one big ticket.

Yes, and we'll show you the footage to prove it. Wendell sweeps the same chimneys every autumn and knows them better than the people who own them. He will tell you when yours does not need doing, which costs him money and is why he still has the customers he started with. Every inspection ends with the camera footage and a plain-English verdict. If you're fine, we'll tell you you're fine, and we'll see you next year.

No charge for that, within the 90-day guarantee window. If you see dust where there shouldn't be dust, if the damper sticks, if something isn't right with the work, call (551) 368-8859 and we come back. The guarantee is in writing because your Passaic home is too important to leave a problem sitting for a season. And because the owner lives twenty minutes away, he'll be the one who shows up to fix it.

Written by Wendell Pike, Owner at Top Hat Chimney, serving Passaic since the branch opened its doors.