How Level Two Chimney Greenwich Was Born in Greenwich
When Corrine Halstead first brought Level Two Chimney Co. to Greenwich, the conversation with homeowners kept circling the same story. People had been told their flues were fine by someone who never looked past the damper. Others had been handed quotes for liner work with nothing to show for it except a verbal warning and a number on a clipboard. The frustration wasn’t that chimney work is expensive. It was that nobody could show them why.
Corrine had spent years in the trade before taking on this branch, and what she kept seeing in Greenwich was a market full of beautiful older homes, complicated flue systems, and homeowners who deserved better documentation than they were getting. Oil-to-gas conversions in Cos Cob. Wood-burning fireplaces in Old Greenwich that hadn’t been opened in a decade. A house in Riverside where three different companies had given three different verdicts on the same flue. The problem wasn’t a lack of chimney sweeps. It was a lack of proof.
So when the Greenwich branch opened, Corrine set one rule for every job that left the shop: nobody gets told anything about their chimney that they can’t see with their own eyes. Camera footage before. Camera footage after. A written price before a brush touches the flue. That’s what this location was built around, and it hasn’t changed since.
Corrine Halstead’s Personal Connection to the Chimney Cleaning Trade
Corrine didn’t grow up dreaming about chimneys. Nobody does. What she did grow up with was an old house that had a fireplace the family actually used, and a father who was particular about how it was maintained. She remembers the sweep coming once a year when she was young, the soot smell that hung in the living room for a day afterward, the way the fire drew better for weeks after a proper cleaning. It was just a thing that got done, like changing the furnace filter or cleaning the gutters. She didn’t think about it professionally until years later.
When she started working in the home services trades, she noticed something that bothered her more than any climb or crawlspace ever did. Too many technicians were trained to sell, not to look. They’d spend ten minutes at a house and hand over a quote for three thousand dollars of work based on what they assumed was inside the flue, not what they’d actually seen. Corrine found herself drawn to the inspection side of the work because it was the one place where honesty wasn’t a slogan. Either the camera shows a cracked liner or it doesn’t. Either the creosote is glazed and dangerous or it’s a routine sweep. The flue doesn’t care about your sales target.
What gets her out of bed in the morning, seventeen years into doing this work and every year since, is the moment a homeowner looks at the screen and says oh, I see it. Not because they’ve been convinced. Because they’ve been shown. If she weren’t doing this, she’d probably be restoring old houses, which is the same instinct in a different form: find what’s actually wrong, fix it the right way, and keep the history intact. The smell of a newly swept fireplace on a cold morning in Greenwich never gets old. It smells like a job done properly.
Meet Corrine Halstead - The Person Behind Every Job
Corrine Halstead is the Owner and Founder of Level Two Chimney Greenwich, leading the local branch that serves homeowners throughout lower Fairfield County and Westchester. She came to chimney work through the home services trades, where she learned early that the difference between a good technician and a great one is documentation. The camera doesn’t flatter you. It shows what’s there. That suited her.
She’s built her career on the unglamorous work of actually looking inside things. Level 2 camera inspections are the foundation of every job this branch does, and Corrine’s standard is simple: if she wouldn’t stand in a homeowner’s living room and explain it to them face to face, it doesn’t go in the report. She reads three-star reviews for fun, because that’s where the truth lives. Outside of work, she’s a hands-on person, the kind who would rather rebuild a sash window than replace it. Her personal commitment to every Greenwich customer is this: you will know what was found, you will see the evidence, and you will never be sold something your flue doesn’t need.
Before
AfterOur Promise to Greenwich Homeowners
The Haven Standard is the backbone of how this branch operates, and it’s the reason we put it on every page we write. It’s not a vibe. It’s five specific commitments.
- Have it in writing. A flat price, a written scope of work, and a written warranty before anyone starts. No verbal estimates that grow after the fact.
- Arrive on schedule. A real service window, a named technician, and a text when we’re on the way. Your time is not a suggestion.
- Verified crews. Every pro working under our name is required to hold the license and insurance their state requires, and that license number belongs on the page where you can check it.
- Evidence on every job. Photos and readings of what we actually found, not a summary of what we thought we saw.
- No surprises. No door upsell, no scope creep, no “while we’re in here” add-ons that weren’t in the written quote.
The fifth one matters most in a place like Greenwich, where half the homes were built before modern liner standards and the other half have been renovated enough times that nobody knows what’s behind the finished walls. You shouldn’t have to guess. Our job is to make sure you don’t.
Our Credentials
- State-licensed. Every technician working under the Level Two Chimney Greenwich name is required to hold the license their state requires. We don’t hide behind it, and we don’t obscure it.
- Insured and bonded. Homeowners hiring someone to work inside their home deserve the peace of mind that comes with proper coverage, and every pro on our jobs carries what the law and common sense require.
- Seventeen years of trade heritage. The brand behind this branch has been inspecting and cleaning chimneys since 2009, carrying camera-scan documentation as standard before it was common practice. That archive is why the parent company was acquired, and why the Haven Standard exists as Clause 4: evidence on every job.
- Strong local reputation. We earn trust one documented flue at a time in Greenwich and the surrounding neighborhoods. No shortcuts, no scare-sell, no work recommended without footage to prove it.
Here’s why these matter to someone hiring a chimney company: the person coming to your house is going to be on your roof or inside your fireplace, telling you whether your home is safe to use as-is or needs work. That person should be verifiably licensed. If something goes wrong, there should be insurance behind it. And the company should have a track record of documenting what it found so that your decision is based on evidence, not a sales pitch.
Rooted in Greenwich
You’ll find our trucks moving through Greenwich, Byram, Riverside, Cos Cob, and Old Greenwich on any given week, and we’ve built this branch around the rhythm of the community itself. The older homes near the Post Road have flues that predate modern liner standards and need a careful eye. The mid-century builds in Stamford and Harrison have their own quirks, from converted oil flues to masonry that’s seen sixty winters. We know which neighborhoods in Port Chester and Rye Brook have the highest concentration of wood-burning fireplaces still in regular use, and we know how the salt air off the Sound affects masonry and cap hardware in Rye, Mamaroneck, and White Plains differently than it does a mile inland. That local knowledge isn’t a marketing line. It’s what makes our inspections faster and our recommendations more precise. When a homeowner in Cos Cob tells us the chimney has always drawn fine except when the wind comes from the east, we know exactly what they mean.
Written by Corrine Halstead, Owner at Level Two Chimney Greenwich, serving Greenwich since 2009.