Written For The Board Packet, Not The Maintenance Closet.
A board does not buy chimney work the way a facility manager does. It approves a motion, in a meeting, against a budget that was set last year — and every owner gets a vote on how it felt. So the proposal has to be readable, phaseable, and defensible in the minutes.
We read your declaration before we scope. Who pays for what is written there, not decided by us.
Most chimney proposals sent to associations are written for a property manager and then forwarded to a board, which is why so many of them get tabled. A board is a group of volunteers making a fiduciary decision in public, on a fixed calendar, with owners watching. This page is written for that room.
Six pressures a vendor usually ignores.
You are volunteers with a fiduciary duty
Nobody on the board is paid to be a building expert, and every one of you carries a duty of care to the association. A known defect that sits in the minutes for three budget cycles with no action is the specific pattern that turns a maintenance issue into a personal-exposure conversation.
Nothing happens without a meeting
A proposal that cannot be read, understood and voted on in one agenda item does not get approved — it gets tabled. Which means the format matters as much as the number. A forty-page technical report with no summary page is a proposal that dies in committee.
The money is locked to a calendar
Operating budget is set once a year and reserves move slower than that. A scope discovered in March that cannot be funded until the next fiscal year has to be phaseable, or the board's only options are a special assessment and doing nothing.
Every owner is a constituent
Owners will ask why their unit was entered, why theirs was tagged and their neighbor's was not, and why the association is paying for something inside a unit. If the board cannot answer those in a sentence, the vendor did not do its job.
The declaration decides who pays
Whether a flue liner is common element or unit-owner responsibility is not a trade question — it is written in your CC&Rs, and communities two streets apart split it differently. Scoping without reading that document produces an invoice the board cannot legally pay.
A special assessment is the failure state
Owners forgive an increase in dues. They do not forgive a five-figure surprise for something that was visibly deteriorating for a decade. Getting chimney and chase components onto the reserve schedule is how the board avoids ever being in that room.
Common element, or the owner's problem?
This is the question that decides whether the association can legally pay an invoice, and it is answered by your declaration — not by the trade and not by what the community down the road does. Below is how these components typically fall. Treat it as the starting point for reading your own document, not as a substitute for reading it.
Chase, stack and exterior masonry
Usually common element
The structure is part of the building envelope in most declarations, which puts spalling brick, failed mortar joints and a leaning stack on the association.
Crown, chase cover and cap
Usually common element
Roof-level and part of the envelope. This is also the most common source of water intrusion that shows up as an interior complaint inside a unit.
Flashing and roof penetration
Almost always common element
Tied to the roof assembly. Where an association contracts roofing separately, we scope the chimney side and say plainly where the boundary sits.
Flue liner serving a single unit
Split — read the declaration
It runs through common structure but serves one unit exclusively. Some declarations assign it to the owner, some to the association, and some are silent — which is its own answer the board needs early.
Firebox, damper and hearth
Usually unit owner
Inside the unit boundary in most communities. Boards frequently still buy the inspection association-wide, because the association carries the fire risk regardless of who owns the part.
Shared or ganged flues
Common element by nature
One unit's defect becomes another unit's exposure, so no single owner can be left to decide. This is the category where a board should never wait for owner initiative.
Where we stop: we mark each finding with our read of which side it falls on and we flag the ones where your document is genuinely silent. Confirming the determination is a legal question for the association's counsel, and we will say so in the report rather than let a convenient assumption become an invoice.
From walkthrough to a motion that passes.
Five stages, built around the meeting rather than around our schedule. The board sees the whole path before it approves the first step.
Walkthrough and a one-page proposal
We walk the community — rooflines, chase tops, terminations, and a sample of interior units — and come back with a one-page summary the board can read aloud, with the technical detail as an appendix behind it. Scope, number, phasing options, and what happens if the vote is no.
A motion that is actually votable
The proposal is written as something a board can move and second: a defined scope, a fixed number, a start window, and a named deliverable. We will attend the meeting — in person or by video — to answer questions directly rather than through a relay of emails.
Owner notice, in the association's voice
You get the notice language for owners: what is happening, why the association is doing it, what access is needed, and what an owner is and is not being charged for. It goes out under the board's or the manager's name, not ours.
Scheduled blocks, per-unit record
Units are worked in blocks in floor order so a posted window means something. Every unit ends with a documented status — serviced, no access, or declined — so no owner can later say they were skipped without a record either way.
A packet built for the minutes
A summary page, findings sorted by severity, the per-unit appendix, and the reserve-relevant conditions written in remaining-useful-life language your reserve analyst can use. It attaches to the minutes as-is.
Documents that attach to the minutes.
One-page board summary
Written to be read at a meeting: what was inspected, what was found, what it costs, and the decision in front of the board. No trade jargon on this page — it belongs in the appendix.
Reserve-study condition input
Component-level condition written in the language a reserve analyst uses — current condition, expected remaining useful life, and estimated replacement scope — so chimney assets stop being invisible in the study.
Severity-sorted findings
Sorted by risk, not by unit number, with a photo behind every finding and the standard it is measured against. The board can fund top-down and stop where the budget stops.
Common-element determination notes
For each finding, our read of whether it sits on association or owner side, flagged against your declaration — and flagged as unclear where the document is genuinely silent. That is a legal call, not ours to make.
Per-unit appendix
Unit-by-unit rows with dates, photos and access outcome. This is the document that answers the individual owner who calls the board president three months later.
Owner notice templates
Plain-language notice and follow-up language the board or manager can send under their own name, including what an owner needs to do to make access happen.
One number the board can move and second.
A community is quoted after a walkthrough, as a fixed scope with a fixed number — not an hourly estimate a board has to defend to owners after the fact. If the budget only covers part of it, we phase it by building or by defect type across two cycles and price each phase separately, so each one is its own clean motion.
Per-unit inspection & sweep, from
$119
A starting point for a scheduled community-wide block. Unit count, access and roof complexity move it; the walkthrough is what settles it.
Capital scopes & reserve items
Quoted per phase
Crowns, chase covers, caps, flashing and masonry are grouped across the community and priced as a phase, so the board approves a scope rather than a stream of individual repairs.
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.
Work that requires a licensed professional — gas, electrical, or structural — is performed or signed off by one, to the code in force where you live.
Where this connects
Tell us your next meeting date. We will work backward.
Community name, building and unit count, and whether the fireplaces are wood or gas is enough to begin. Send the declaration if you have it handy — it changes the scope more than anything else you could send. We will schedule the walkthrough, come back with a one-page proposal built for your agenda, and attend the meeting if the board wants questions answered live.
Board members are volunteers, and nobody wants a sales cycle in their evening. One walkthrough, one proposal, one meeting — and a clear answer if the board decides to defer.
Request a compliance quote
Single-site, multifamily, or national portfolio — tell us the system and the sites.
HOA & condo boards — FAQ
Who pays — the association or the individual owner?
Your declaration decides that, not us and not custom. In most communities the chase, crown, cap and flashing are common element and the firebox and damper are inside the unit boundary, while a flue liner serving one unit is genuinely split depending on how the document is worded. We ask for the CC&Rs before we scope, mark each finding with our read of which side it falls on, and flag the ones where the document is silent rather than guessing. Where it matters financially, the board should have counsel confirm the call — that determination is a legal one.
Can someone attend our board meeting and present this?
Yes, in person or by video, and it is usually the fastest path to a decision. Boards stall on chimney scopes because the proposal arrives as a technical document nobody on the board can defend to owners. Twenty minutes of direct questions — why this unit and not that one, what happens if we defer a year, what does phase two look like — resolves more than three rounds of email through the management company.
What if an owner refuses to let anyone into their unit?
It gets documented and handed back to the board, because from that point it is a governance matter rather than a scheduling one. We log the refusal with the date and attempt history, and the unit shows on the report as unserviced. Most declarations give the association a right of entry for inspection and maintenance of common elements, and most refusals resolve once the board sends a second notice citing it. We do not force entry and we do not pressure residents.
Our reserve study does not mention chimneys at all. Can this fix that?
That is one of the main reasons to run it. We produce component condition in the format a reserve analyst can consume — what the component is, what condition it is in now, roughly how much service life is left, and what replacement or major repair would involve. Your analyst decides funding math; we supply the field condition it is missing. Chimney and chase components are one of the most commonly omitted line items in a study, and they fail on a schedule long enough that nobody notices until several fail at once.
We can only fund part of this in the current budget. Does that work?
Yes, and it is the normal outcome rather than the exception. The findings are severity-sorted so the board can fund from the top and draw a line where the money runs out, and the remainder carries forward as a documented, quantified item instead of a vague intention. We will also phase by building or by defect type across two budget years if that fits the cycle better. What we will not do is quietly renumber the priorities so a bigger scope fits.
What do we tell owners who ask why the association is entering their unit?
You get notice language written for exactly that. The short version: shared and adjacent flues mean one unit's condition is every unit's fire and carbon-monoxide exposure, the association carries that risk regardless of who owns the individual part, and an inspection now is what keeps it from becoming an assessment later. Owners accept it far better when the notice states what is being looked at, how long a technician is in the unit, and what the owner is not being billed for.
If we know a flue is unsafe and we do not fix it immediately, where does that leave the board?
In the position boards least want to be in, which is why our findings are written to be acted on. When we find a condition that makes a fireplace unsafe to use, that unit's fireplace is tagged out of service in writing the day we find it and the notification record goes to the board. Taking a unit out of service is cheap and immediate; the repair can follow the budget. What creates exposure is a documented finding with no documented response, and the packet is structured so the board's response is on the record too. Any work requiring a licensed professional — gas, electrical, or structural — is performed or signed off by one, to the code in force where you live.
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