How Emberly Chimney Cleaners Huntington Beach Was Born in Huntington Beach
We remember the exact afternoon in late 2009 when we knew Huntington Beach needed something different. A homeowner near Beach Boulevard called us after another company had quoted her a full liner replacement, sight unseen, for what she described as “more than my car payment.” She was shaken. We’d already been working with the Emberly Chimney Cleaners standards in other markets, and we drove over with a camera rig and a flashlight.
What we found was a cracked clay tile, third from the top. Nothing more. We pulled the image up on the screen right there in her driveway, showed her the surrounding tiles were sound, and repaired the single failure with a proper stainless sleeve. She paid for two hours of work and a part you could hold in one hand. That was the moment. Huntington Beach had plenty of sweeps who could run a brush and plenty of salesmen who could write a scary invoice. What it didn’t have was a crew that would put the camera down the flue, show the homeowner exactly what was there, and charge only for what the evidence supported. We opened our Huntington Beach branch the following spring, and that promise, Clause 4 of the Haven Standard, has been the foundation of every job since.
Corrine Halstead’s Personal Connection to the Chimney Cleaning Trade
Corrine Halstead didn’t stumble into chimney work. She was pulled into it by the smell of creosote and the particular silence of a flue when a camera is threading down through thirty feet of masonry. Before she ever put her name on a truck in Huntington Beach, she spent years working alongside a tradesman who trained her the old way: you don’t tell a homeowner what they need. You show them, and you let the brick and the footage speak.
The work means something personal to her that a credential can’t capture. It’s the moment when a skeptical customer leans in to look at the monitor and their shoulders drop, because now they can see it too, the gap or the glaze or the bird nest, and the decision belongs to them again. Corrine has told us more than once that if she weren’t doing this, she’d probably be restoring old boats in Newport Harbor, working with her hands on something that either functions or it doesn’t, no room for persuasion in between. The honesty of that appeals to her.
What gets her out of bed is the memory of the ones who almost got taken. The retired teacher in Rossmoor who was told her entire chimney needed rebuilding. The young couple in their first Costa Mesa bungalow who were quoted a liner they didn’t need because the sweep never actually looked inside. Corrine has been doing this long enough that the patterns repeat, and that repetition fuels her. She knows what spring in Huntington Beach does to mortar, how the salt air off the Pacific accelerates corrosion on caps and flashing, how the older homes near downtown still have unlined brick chimneys that most crews won’t touch. That knowledge is lived, not studied. She’s crawled through attics in August when the roof decking was too hot to touch, and she’s been on roofs in January when the marine layer made every shingle slick. The work is physical and precise, and she still does it herself when the job demands it.
Meet Corrine Halstead - The Person Behind Every Job
Corrine Halstead is the Owner and Founder of Emberly Chimney Cleaners Huntington Beach. She holds state licensure for chimney and fireplace work in California, carries full insurance and bonding, and has spent the better part of two decades building her expertise flue by flue. Her training came initially from hands-on apprenticeship and has been sharpened by continuous work with the Haven Standard documentation system, which requires photo and video evidence on every inspection.
What separates Corrine from a corporate franchise technician is simple: she’s the one who answers when something goes wrong, and she’s the one who drives back to fix it. She lives in Huntington Beach, surfs early mornings when the wind is right, and believes that a business rooted in a community should be accountable to it directly. Her commitment to every customer is straightforward - she will put a camera down your flue, she will show you what she found, and she will put the price and scope in writing before any work begins. That’s Clause 1. She doesn’t consider a job finished until the documentation is in your hands.
Before
AfterOur Promise to Huntington Beach Homeowners
Our values aren’t abstract. They’re policies we enforce on ourselves.
Honest pricing. We name our price range on every page, in dollars, because Clause 1 of the Haven Standard requires a flat, written price before anyone starts. We once had a homeowner in Seal Beach compare our written estimate to a verbal quote she’d received elsewhere. The other number had doubled by the time the work was done. Ours didn’t, because it couldn’t. The scope was fixed when we wrote it down.
Quality parts. We use stainless steel liners from Olympia Chimney and Famco when relining is actually needed, not because they’re the cheapest but because their gauge and seam welding hold up to our coastal conditions. We’ve seen inferior flex liners corrode through in five years near the ocean. We won’t install them.
Standing behind every job. Our warranty is written, dated, and specific to the work performed. If a cap we installed fails, we replace it. No argument, no re-inspection fee. The Haven Standard requires that we leave a documented record of what we found and what we did. That record is your protection and ours.
Our Credentials
- State-licensed for chimney and fireplace services in California
- Insured & bonded for residential work throughout Orange County
- Years of local experience serving Huntington Beach and surrounding communities
- Strong local reputation built on documented inspections and written guarantees
Every pro working under our name is required to hold the license and insurance their state requires, and to work to the Haven Standard that governs our documentation, pricing, and warranty. For a homeowner hiring someone to work inside their home, these credentials matter because they create accountability. A licensed, insured, bonded operator with a written standard has something to lose if the work fails. An unlicensed sweep with a brush and a business card does not. We carry our documentation to every estimate, and we’ll show it on request.
Rooted in Huntington Beach
We’re not tourists here. Our trucks roll through the neighborhoods we live in: the Eichler courts near Adams Avenue, the compact bungalows between Beach and Magnolia, the hillside homes with ocean views that take the full brunt of the Pacific wind. We’ve worked on chimneys in Fountain Valley ranch homes and Midway City cottages built before the freeway came through. We know how the Santa Ana winds test chimney caps in September, and we’ve cleared the nests that squirrels build in flues between October and December. Corrine Halstead has raised her family here, and our crew includes people who grew up in Westminster and Garden Grove. The Haven Standard gives us our procedures, but Huntington Beach gives us our purpose. This is where we live, and this is where we answer for our work.
Written by Corrine Halstead, Owner at Emberly Chimney Cleaners Huntington Beach, serving Huntington Beach and surrounding communities since 2009.