Meet the Team - Emberly Chimney Cleaners Cambridge

Meet the Cambridge Team Behind Emberly Chimney Cleaners Cambridge

We’re the crew that shows up in your driveway with a van full of rods, brushes, and a camera rig that costs more than most cars. Every person on this page has swept chimneys in Cambridge through January ice, September leaf fires, and that week in March when everyone’s flue smells like wet dog. What ties us together isn’t a handbook. It’s the Haven Standard, and the fact that none of us can stand leaving a job half-finished.

Our People

Corrine Halstead, Owner

I started Emberly Chimney Cleaners in 2009 after six years of watching homeowners get talked into work they didn’t need, with no photos, no written scope, and no way to verify any of it. That became the Haven Standard. I’ve personally inspected or overseen more than 38,000 chimney visits since then, and I still climb when someone needs a second opinion on a liner quote that doesn’t smell right. I keep a notebook of every spalling brick pattern I’ve seen in Cambridge’s pre-war housing stock, from the triple-deckers in Inman Square to the capless flues in North Cambridge that flood every hard rain. Off the clock, I restore vintage tool chests. The one in my truck is a 1948 Kennedy that weighs 87 pounds empty.

Marcus T., Lead Technician

Marcus has been running sweeps in Middlesex County for fourteen years, and he’s the reason our Cambridge crew can handle a six-flue apartment building on Broadway without shutting down heat to twelve units. He’s CSIA-certified and specializes in Class III glazed creosote removal, the hard, tar-like buildup that flakes off like obsidian and can reduce a flue opening by half. Marcus is the one who figured out that the clay liners in 1920s Porter Square condos almost always crack at the thimble connection, not the crown, which saves us hours of misdiagnosis. He commutes from Somerville on a bike with a trailer that carries his rod set. Says the hills keep him honest.

Dana K., Senior Installer

Dana handles our liner drops, crown pours, and rebuilds, the jobs where you’re working with materials that have to survive 2,000 degrees and twenty Cambridge winters. She’s certified in HeatShield cerfractory flue sealant application and DuraFlex relining, and she’s installed liners in everything from a Harvard Square restaurant’s pizza oven flue to a single-family in West Cambridge where the original 1890s liner was still in place, crumbling like shortbread. Dana grew up in a house with a wood stove in Lowell and learned early that a cold draft means a blocked flue, not a broken damper. She still checks her own chimney with a mirror and flashlight every October, same as her grandfather taught her.

Raj P., Service Coordinator

Raj answers the phones, schedules the routes, and makes sure the written price, written scope, and written warranty land in your inbox before anyone knocks on your door. He’s the one who flagged that our East Cambridge customers were getting double-booked during leaf season because every homeowner waits until the first frost scare. Raj rebuilt our dispatch logic so Cambridge zip codes get clustered by bridge access, not just mileage, which cut our late arrivals by half. He was born in Bangalore, trained as an electrical engineer at WPI, and switched to home services because he likes fixing problems people can actually see. He keeps a whiteboard in the office with every active job, every promised deadline, and every reason a customer called back unhappy. The board hasn’t had an entry in the “unhappy” column since March.

Elena V., Apprentice

Elena joined us in 2023 after two years in HVAC duct cleaning, which taught her how to work in spaces built for no human body. She’s apprenticing under Marcus on sweeps and Dana on liner prep, and she’s already better with a chimney camera than most techs with five years in. Elena has a knack for finding bird nests in flues, something about the way she listens for airflow changes before she even sends the camera up. She lives in an apartment near Central Square with no fireplace, which she says is probably for the best given what she’s seen. On weekends she volunteers with the Cambridge Fire Department’s smoke alarm program, which is how she found us, actually, she recognized our van at a community safety fair and asked if we were hiring.

One Standard, Every Job

The Haven Standard isn’t a slogan we put on the website. It’s six clauses that govern how we work, and every person on this page can recite them. Clause 1 requires a written price, written scope, and written warranty before work starts, no exceptions. Clause 4 requires a documented photo record on every visit, included as standard, not sold as an upgrade. The 365-Day Done Right Promise is stamped on every job, and if something’s not right, we make it right. We source materials through Haven’s buying network, DuraFlex, HeatShield, Gelco, Olympia Chimney, Famco, and Copperfield, to keep prices honest and quality consistent. Every technician is background-checked, uniformed, and named on your appointment. You’ll get a text when we’re on the way. Calls are answered by a live person, 24 hours a day, not a voicemail tree. We’re independently owned and operated in Cambridge, not a franchise, and we’ve been at this since 2009.

Written by Corrine Halstead, Owner at Emberly Chimney Cleaners Cambridge, serving Cambridge since 2009.