Meet the Team - Level Two Chimney Washington

Meet the Washington Team Behind Level Two Chimney Washington

We’re a small crew. That’s deliberate. Chimney work in Washington, DC means navigating 100-year-old row houses in Capitol Hill, 1920s colonials in Chevy Chase, and mid-century builds in Takoma Park, each with its own quirks. Our technicians have walked thousands of DC roofs and peered down thousands of flues. Every one of them works under the same rule: measure, document, then explain. No estimate leaves a clipboard without a written price, no job wraps without a photo record. That’s not a company slogan. It’s Clause 4 of the Haven Standard, and it’s how we’ve run since 2009.

Our People

Marcus T. – Lead Technician

Marcus has run chimney cleaning and repair crews in DC for 14 years, the last 8 of them with Level Two Chimney Washington. He holds a current CSIA certification and specializes in difficult access work: tight flues, steep pitches, and the kind of Victorian-era masonry you find in Georgetown. If a chimney in Washington has an unusual draft problem or a hidden obstruction, Marcus has likely seen it twice before and documented it both times. He’s also the one who insists every new technician learn to identify Class III creosote by sight before they’re allowed to write up a level of their own. Off the roof, he’s restoring a 1965 Mustang in a garage that, he’ll tell you plainly, has the worst ventilation of any space he’s ever worked in.

Dana R. – Senior Installer, Liners & Rebuilds

Dana came up through masonry before moving into flue work, which is why she gets the rebuild jobs that make other crews hesitate: cracked smoke chambers, spalling brick, crowns that have gone from minor cracking to full structural failure. She’s our lead hand for HeatShield application and DuraFlex liner installations, and she’s done over 900 liner jobs across Washington, DC, Montgomery County, and Northern Virginia. Dana is the person who walks a homeowner through exactly what the camera found, in plain terms, before a single brick gets touched. She keeps a small garden in Brightwood and, by her own admission, grows tomatoes that are “aggressively average.”

Priya S. – Service Coordinator

Priya is the voice on the phone, and she’s been dispatching chimney work in the DC market for six years. Her job starts with listening: what you’re seeing, what you’re smelling, when the fireplace was last swept, whether any animals have made themselves known. Then she builds the visit around it. She’s the one who assigns a named technician to your appointment and makes sure you get a text when that tech is on the way, per Clause 3 of the Haven Standard. Priya grew up in Silver Spring and knows the neighborhoods well enough to tell you, without checking a map, whether your chimney is likely masonry or prefab. She keeps a notebook of every rowhome block in Petworth where flue access requires the short ladder, not the extension. That kind of detail keeps our days honest.

Andre W. – Apprentice Technician

Andre is in his second year with us, working toward his own CSIA certification under Marcus and Dana. He started doing level-one cleanings on residential fireplaces in Hyattsville and College Park, and he now assists on liner inspections and cap replacement jobs across Washington. His specialty, if an apprentice can claim one, is documenting: Andre runs the camera on most Level 2 inspections and logs the photo records that every customer walks away with, per Clause 4. He’s quick with the chimney sweep brushes and quicker with a camera angle that actually shows the flue condition rather than a blurry shadow. He bowls on Thursdays in a league in Wheaton and, according to Marcus, has the highest documented creosote-identification accuracy of any second-year tech the DC branch has trained.

One Standard, Every Job

The Haven Standard has twelve clauses. Our Washington crew works under all of them, but the ones we talk about most are the first four: a written price before work starts, a written scope, a written warranty, and a documented photo record on completion. That’s not a training ideal. It’s printed on the paperwork every customer receives when we arrive. Marcus, Dana, Priya, and Andre each answer to it in different ways, but the outcome is the same: you know the number before we start, you see the evidence before you approve any repair, and you get a record when we’re done. If something isn’t done right, the 365-Day Done Right Promise means we come back and make it right. No debate, no charge. In Washington, DC, where flue conditions vary block by block and building code stretches back a century, that consistency is the product. The crew just happens to be the people who deliver it.

Written by Corrine Halstead, Owner at Level Two Chimney Washington, serving Washington, DC and surrounding communities since 2009.