How Emberly Chimney Cleaners Long Beach Was Born in Long Beach
We remember the exact afternoon in late 2009 when we knew Long Beach needed something different. Corrine Halstead was on a job in Belmont Shore, called in after another company had walked away. The homeowner, a retired teacher on Ocean Boulevard, had been quoted $4,200 for a “collapsed flue” that no one had actually looked inside. Corrine brought our camera rig, dropped it down the flue, and found a bird’s nest wedged above the smoke shelf. Forty minutes later, the fireplace drew clean. The homeowner cried. Not from relief alone, but from anger at what she’d almost paid for a problem that didn’t exist.
That evening, Corrine sat in traffic on the 710, still smelling of creosote and coffee from the homeowner’s kitchen, and made a call to Haven. Emberly Chimney Cleaners had been running camera inspections as standard practice for years, archiving every scan. The archive meant we could prove a liner had failed before a fire, not after. That practice became Clause 4 of the Haven Standard. Corrine asked what it would take to bring that standard to Long Beach. The answer was simple: build a local team that would work to it, not around it. We opened our doors in Long Beach in 2009, and that teacher on Ocean Boulevard became the first entry in our local archive. We still have her footage.
Corrine Halstead’s Personal Connection to the Chimney Cleaning Trade
Corrine didn’t stumble into chimney work. She was pulled into it by the smell of wet ash and the sound of a brush catching on creosote buildup that shouldn’t have been there. Before Long Beach, before Emberly, she spent years working alongside a tradesman who trained her the old way: by feel, by eye, and eventually by camera. He’d tap the flue tiles with a hammer and know from the ring whether they were sound. Corrine learned to hear that difference, but she also learned its limits. You can’t hear a cracked liner hidden behind intact brick. You can’t see past the damper with a flashlight held at arm’s length.
The moment that changed everything was a winter morning in a house near Bixby Knolls. The homeowner had burned pine for three seasons, unaware that the resin had glazed the flue with third-degree creosote, thick and shiny as obsidian. Corrine’s mentor said it would probably hold another year. Corrine ran the camera anyway. What came back on the monitor made her hands cold. The glaze was cracking in sheets, and behind it, the clay liner had spalled to half its thickness. They swept it that day, installed a stainless liner the following week, and the homeowner sent a photograph the next Christmas of his family in front of that fire.
That’s what pulls Corrine out of bed in the mornings, even now, after more than a decade and a half of this work. Not the sweep itself, but the photograph. The proof that someone is warm and safe because of what we found and showed them. If she weren’t doing this, she’d probably be restoring old boats in San Pedro, working with her hands, solving problems that hide beneath surfaces. The work isn’t so different. Both require patience, both punish shortcuts, and both leave something behind that outlasts you.
Meet Corrine Halstead - The Person Behind Every Job
Corrine Halstead is the Owner and Founder of Emberly Chimney Cleaners Long Beach. She holds every state license required to perform chimney inspection, cleaning, and liner installation in California, and every pro working under our name is required to hold the license and insurance their state requires. Her training began in the field, not in a classroom, though she’s since completed every certification the Chimney Safety Institute of America offers for sweep technicians and inspection protocol.
What separates Corrine from a corporate franchise technician is simple: she’s the one who answers when the local coordinator connects you, and she’s the one who reviews every camera scan before it goes to the homeowner. She lives in Long Beach, in a 1924 California bungalow with its own original masonry fireplace, which she sweeps herself every March before the last cool evenings fade. Her personal commitment is direct: if we recommend work, you’ll see the footage that proves why. If we say it can wait, we’ll tell you exactly how long and what to watch for. No one at Emberly Chimney Cleaners Long Beach profits from a repair you don’t need.
Before
AfterOur Promise to Long Beach Homeowners
Our values aren’t framed on a wall. They’re tested on every job.
Honest pricing. Clause 1 of the Haven Standard requires a flat price, written scope, and written warranty before anyone starts. In 2017, a homeowner in Lakewood called us after another company added $1,800 in “discovered damage” mid-job. We now build every estimate with a contingency clause: if we find something we didn’t quote, we stop, show you the camera footage, and write a separate scope with its own price. You approve it or we button it up and leave. No surprises.
Quality parts. We specify our liners and components by manufacturer. When a Long Beach homeowner needs a stainless flex liner, we use DuraFlex or Famco depending on the flue geometry and fuel type, and we show you the label before it goes in. Cheap liners fail at the seams. We’ve pulled enough of them out to know.
Standing behind every job. Our warranty is written, dated, and transferable. In 2019, a liner we installed in Seal Beach developed a seam separation, rare but possible with thermal cycling. We found it on the scheduled two-year follow-up scan, replaced it at no charge, and added the failure mode to our pre-install checklist. The warranty isn’t a promise. It’s a practice we document.
Our Credentials
- State-licensed - Every pro working under our name is required to hold the license their state requires for chimney and fireplace work.
- Insured & bonded - Coverage is maintained at the levels required for residential work inside occupied homes.
- Years of local experience - Corrine Halstead has led this branch since 2009, building expertise specific to Long Beach’s coastal climate, its 1920s-1950s housing stock, and the salt-air deterioration patterns we see in neighborhoods from the Peninsula to Wilmington.
- Strong local reputation - We are known in Long Beach for the archive: every camera scan, every photo, every reading, saved and searchable, going back to our first job.
These credentials matter because chimney work happens inside your home, often on your roof, always with consequences for fire safety and air quality. A homeowner hiring someone to work in their home needs more than a friendly voice. They need proof that the person climbing their ladder is accountable, documented, and working to a standard they can verify. The Haven Standard gives you that verification in writing, before the work starts and after it ends.
Rooted in Long Beach
We’re not from everywhere. We’re from here. Corrine lives in Long Beach, shops at the farmers market on Second Street, and knows which blocks in Belmont Heights still have their original terracotta liners and which were rebuilt after the earthquake. We’ve swept chimneys in Naples, in the Wrigley District, and in the small craftsman pockets of North Long Beach that most service maps skip. The coastal air here is harder on masonry than inland homeowners realize. Salt mist wicks into porous brick, freezes on the rare cold night, and spalls the face right off. We see it in San Pedro and Seal Beach too, and we know the difference between cosmetic weathering and structural compromise because we’ve documented both, year after year, in this specific place.
Our trucks carry Olympia Chimney and Copperfield supply catalogs because we’ve learned which products hold up to this climate and which don’t. The local business is ours: our license, our trucks, our neighbors. What Haven contributes is the standard we agreed to work to, the documentation system that proves it, and the buying power that keeps our prices honest. That’s the trade, and we think it’s a fair one.
Written by Corrine Halstead, Owner at Emberly Chimney Cleaners Long Beach, serving Long Beach and surrounding communities since 2009.