A Level 2 scan on a closing's clock — camera footage, written findings, and repair numbers a buyer, seller, and agent can actually negotiate with.
A house changing hands is exactly when the national standard says a chimney should get its deep look: NFPA 211 calls for a Level 2 inspection — accessible portions plus a video scan of the flue interior — upon sale or transfer. General home inspectors in Ohio do valuable work, but most will tell you themselves that the inside of a flue is outside their scope; the line "recommend evaluation by a qualified chimney professional" in a home-inspection report is this page's entire reason to exist. A local chimney mason serving Cleveland, Lakewood, Parma, and the rest of Cuyahoga County delivers that evaluation on a deadline.
The average buyer in this county is buying old masonry — a 1920s double in Lakewood, a Tudor in the Heights, a postwar bungalow in Parma — and the flue is the one major system a buyer cannot eyeball at a showing. A camera run answers the expensive questions before they become the buyer's problems: whether the clay tiles are cracked (a relining conversation), whether a long-ago chimney fire glazed the flue, whether the smoke chamber is raw corbeled brick, whether the crown is feeding water into the stack. Sellers use the same scan in reverse: a pre-listing inspection with the repairs already quoted — or already done — takes the chimney off the negotiating table before it can cost more in concessions than the fix would have. And many of the county's inner-ring suburbs run their own municipal point-of-sale inspections when a house changes hands; those city checklists look at a chimney from the outside, and a flue scan is the natural companion the city inspector isn't equipped to perform.
The product is paper a transaction can use: a written Level 2 report under the national standard's definitions, the camera footage itself, photographs of exterior conditions — crown, flashing, joints, spalling — and, where problems turn up, itemized repair estimates a buyer's agent can put in a request-to-remedy or a seller can hand to the listing file. Findings are stated as findings, not theater: an old flue with sound tiles is reported as sound, because a referral service whose inspections always find five figures of work stops getting referrals. Scheduling runs on the transaction's clock — inspection-contingency windows in this market are short, and the masons on this roster treat a pending sale in Euclid or West Park as a this-week appointment, not a someday one.
Buyers: call during the inspection contingency with the address and access arrangements, and say who should receive the report. Sellers: call before listing, and decide with numbers in hand whether to fix, credit, or disclose. Agents: this service is built to be the phone number you keep for the sentence every Cuyahoga County home-inspection report eventually contains. In every case the pattern holds — describe the property, get the inspection scheduled, and every repair estimate that follows is free, with no pressure attached to any of it. The general inspection page covers the standard's levels in more depth if the vocabulary is new.
Closing date on the calendar? Say the address, the deadline, and who gets the report; a mason with a camera books it on the transaction's clock.
Call (216) 284-2890 Use the Form