A Proposal Your Board Can Vote On. A Record That Outlasts It.
Boards decide in a meeting, on an annual budget, with personal exposure attached. We work to that reality: a written scope your directors can approve on a motion, per-owner results they can forward instead of defend, and condition data your reserve analyst can actually use.
We present findings and pricing. We don't lobby owners and we don't take a position on your vote.
Five constraints a vendor either respects or fights.
A management company can sign a contract on a Tuesday. A board can’t. Everything about how we scope, price and report for an association is shaped by that difference.
Nothing happens between meetings
A board decides in a room, on a motion, with a quorum. A proposal that arrives as a phone quote and a handshake has nowhere to go. What a board can act on is a written scope with a number, exclusions stated, and a term — something the secretary can attach to the minutes.
You are volunteers with personal exposure
Directors carry a duty of care to the association. The uncomfortable version of that: if the board knew a flue was unsafe and the record doesn't show it acted, the record is the problem. Documentation isn't paperwork here — it's the evidence that the board did its job.
The budget is annual and mostly spoken for
A community's chimneys compete with roofing, paving, and insurance renewals inside a fixed operating budget and a reserve schedule that was set before anyone found a cracked crown. Work that can't be phased often doesn't get approved at all.
Every owner will have an opinion
Some owners never use their fireplace and resent paying. Some will insist their unit is fine. Some will forward the whole thread to an attorney. The board needs a per-owner answer in writing, not a summary that invites a second round of email.
Who pays is a governing-document question
Chase, crown, cap, flashing and the common flue structure are usually association responsibility; what sits inside the unit often isn't. But that split lives in your CC&Rs, and we don't interpret them. We write findings by component and by unit so your manager or counsel can map them to the documents cleanly.
The question that stalls more chimney projects than money does.
Below is how these components typically fall in condominium and townhome documents. It is general orientation, not a reading of your association’s documents — we write findings component by component so your manager or counsel can do that mapping against the CC&Rs that actually govern you.
| Component | Typically | Why it usually falls that way |
|---|---|---|
| Chase, stack and shared vertical structure | Commonly the association | It is building structure serving more than one unit, and a failure inside it affects units that didn't cause it. |
| Crown, cap, spark arrestor, flashing, chase cover | Commonly the association | These sit on the roof plane. Water that gets past them enters the building envelope, not just one unit. |
| Flue liner serving a single unit | Split — read the documents | Some documents treat the liner as part of the common structure; others assign it to the unit it serves. This is the line that most often gets argued. |
| Firebox, damper, hearth and hearth extension | Commonly the unit owner | Inside the unit boundary in most documents, and driven by how that owner uses the appliance. |
| Gas logs, inserts and owner-added appliances | Commonly the unit owner | Frequently installed after purchase, sometimes without approval, and the install itself is what the finding usually concerns. |
| Damage caused by an owner's use or neglect | Usually chargeable to that owner | Which is exactly why the record has to be per unit and photographed — a chargeback without evidence doesn't survive a challenge. |
Built around your meeting calendar.
Scope call before you need a number
A short call with the board president, the treasurer, or your community manager — how many units have fireplaces, when the last inspection was, what the reserve study currently carries for chimneys, and when your budget is adopted. That call decides what the proposal has to look like to be votable.
Walkthrough of the community
We look at the roofs, the chases, the terminations, and a representative sample of interiors before pricing. If the buildings differ by phase — and in most communities they do — the proposal reflects that rather than averaging a real problem into a flat per-unit number.
A proposal formatted for the board packet
Scope, unit count, per-unit and total figures, what is expressly excluded, the access assumptions we priced against, and the term. One page the secretary can attach to an agenda, with the detail behind it if a director asks. If your documents require competing bids, this is the format that makes yours comparable.
Owner notice, then the work
We supply the owner-facing notice language; the association sends it under its own letterhead. Units are worked in scheduled blocks, each on its own record, and anything unsafe is taken out of service and tagged the day it's found with written notice to that owner.
Results the board can act on and file
A per-owner result letter, an association-level condition summary with counts by severity, and a findings section written so it can be handed to your reserve analyst. Approved repairs are quoted as separate lines so the board can phase them across budget years by vote.
Documents that survive the next board election.
Board-packet proposal
Scope, price, exclusions, assumptions and term on one page, written to be read aloud at a meeting and attached to the minutes.
Per-owner result letter
Each owner gets their own unit's findings in plain language, with the photos. The board stops being the middleman in a technical argument.
Association condition summary
Counts by severity across the community, by building or phase, so the board can see whether it has a five-unit problem or a systemic one.
Reserve-study input
Component condition and remaining-life observations written in the form a reserve analyst can use, so venting gets a funded line instead of surfacing as an assessment.
Evidence the board acted
Dated findings, tag-out records and owner notices — the file that shows what the association knew and what it did about it.
Phasing options, priced
Repairs broken into approvable lines so the board can vote a subset this year and calendar the rest, with the deferred risk stated in writing.
One quote per community, after a walkthrough.
We price the community, not a unit in the abstract — roof access, building phases, appliance mix and how many units can be worked per day all move it. Scheduled per-unit inspection with the full photo record starts at $139 per unit when units are batched into consecutive visits. Repairs are quoted as separate, approvable lines so the board can vote a subset.
The proposal states its exclusions and access assumptions in writing. If a competing bid is cheaper because it scoped less, your directors should be able to see that on the page before the motion, not after the invoice.
Prices shown are starting estimates and may change with the condition, access, and scope we find on site. Only a written quote from an on-site visit is a price we commit to.
Property managers
The operational side: access, rotations, portfolio invoicing and risk ranking.
OpenMultifamily venting
Shared-chase scans, cross-contamination testing and per-unit lockout.
OpenCode compliance review
What a component is measured against when a finding says it fails.
OpenCrown & flashing repair
The roof-plane components that most often land on the association's side.
OpenTell us your meeting date. We’ll work backwards from it.
Community name, number of units with fireplaces, and when your board next meets is enough to start. Directors, treasurers and community managers all reach the same desk here — put your role in the form so the proposal lands in the format you need it in.
Request a compliance quote
Single-site, multifamily, or national portfolio — tell us the system and the sites.
HOA & condo boards — FAQ
Can someone present this at our board meeting?
Yes. We'll join a board or annual meeting — in person where the community is in our service area, otherwise by video — to walk the findings, answer director questions, and take the ones we can't answer on the spot back in writing. What we won't do is lobby owners or take a position on an assessment vote. We present what we found and what it costs to fix; the vote is the board's.
Our documents require three bids. Does that work for you?
It's normal and we price expecting it. The proposal states scope, exclusions and access assumptions explicitly for exactly that reason — competing bids are only comparable when everyone's scope is written down. If a lower bid is priced against a narrower scope, the board should be able to see that on the page rather than discover it mid-project.
Who pays — the association or the individual owner?
That's decided by your CC&Rs, and we don't interpret governing documents. What we do is write findings by component and by unit, so your manager or counsel can map each item to the responsible party without guessing. As a general pattern, roof-plane components and shared structure fall to the association and what's inside the unit boundary falls to the owner, but your documents govern.
Can we phase this over two or three budget years?
Yes, and it's usually the right call. Unsafe conditions come out first — those units are taken out of service the day they're found and aren't a budget question. Everything else is quoted as its own line so the board can approve a tranche now and calendar the rest. We'll also state what deferring a given line risks, because a board that phases work should be able to show it phased it knowingly.
What if an owner refuses to let us in?
We document the attempt, the date, and the refusal, and hand it back to the association. Enforcement is the board's authority, not ours. The reason we log it rather than skip it: a unit that was never inspected because an owner blocked access is a very different fact for the association than a unit that was quietly missed.
Our reserve study doesn't have a line for chimneys. Can you help fix that?
We can give your reserve analyst what they need: component-level condition, observed deterioration, and remaining-life observations with photos and dates behind them. We're not reserve analysts and we don't issue reserve studies — we produce the field condition data the study is built from, which is the piece that's usually missing when chimneys show up as a surprise assessment.
If there's a fire and the association is named, does this help?
It's the difference between an association that can show what it knew and what it did, and one that can't. Dated per-unit findings, photos behind every finding, tag-outs on unsafe appliances, and written owner notices are the record. We won't promise you an outcome in a lawsuit — nobody honestly can — but the absence of that record is a problem you can fix before you need it.
Get it inspected. Get it in writing.
Flat fee confirmed when you book. Same-week scheduling. A pass/fail verdict within 48 hours.
24/7 Response
Chimney fire, storm hit, active leak, or a flue you're not sure about? We answer 7 AM to midnight and the assessment ends in a written safe-to-use verdict — including a do-not-use notice when the evidence supports one. After-hours dispatch runs subject to crew availability.
Emergency line