Per Unit. Not Per Building.
Management companies and portfolio owners get the same thing from most fireplace vendors: an invoice that says the building was serviced. That is not a record. We run fireplaces and flues as a scheduled per-unit rotation — every unit numbered, photographed, and ranked — so you can hand an owner a document instead of a reassurance.
Insurance certificate, endorsement and tax form issued to your onboarding requirements before the first walkthrough.
What a managed portfolio actually deals with.
None of this is about chimneys in the abstract. It is about occupied units, a turn calendar, an owner who is not on site, and a budget that runs out before the list does.
The unit nobody reported
Tenants call about heat, not about a cracked flue tile or a firebox panel that has finally split. The units most likely to be dangerous are the ones producing the fewest complaints, which is exactly why a rotation beats a work-order queue.
Access is the whole job
A fireplace program lives or dies on getting into occupied units. Notice windows, escorts, lockboxes, pets, work-from-home schedules, and the two units that never answer — that is the real operational problem, and it is on us to solve, not on your site staff.
Turnover has no slack
A vacant unit is the easiest one to service and the shortest window you have. We would rather hold slots against your turn schedule than show up when the flooring crew is already in the room.
The owner wants a number
Whoever signs the check is usually not on site. They want to know what is wrong, what it costs, and what happens if it waits. That is a document, not a phone call, and it is the thing most vendors never produce.
Budget is finite and the worst unit is not obvious
If everything on the report reads the same, the money gets spread evenly and the genuinely unsafe units wait their turn. Findings that are not ranked are findings that cannot be budgeted.
Onboarding paperwork blocks the work
COI, additional-insured endorsement, W-9, and whatever vendor portal your company runs on. None of it is the service, all of it stops the service from starting.
Six steps, on your calendar.
Vendor onboarding
Proof of coverage, an endorsement listing your entities, and a completed tax form, all cut to your company's requirements and loaded into whatever vendor portal you use. We do this before the walkthrough so nothing waits on paperwork later.
Property walkthrough & asset inventory
We walk the property and build the actual asset list: how many fireplaces, what type each one is (masonry, factory-built, gas insert, electric), how the chases and shared flues are laid out, and which units have appliances the original spec sheet does not mention. The inventory is what the whole program is priced and scheduled against.
Notice & access plan
We build the unit list into a route with dated notice windows, agreed with your site staff and issued the way your leases and state notice rules require. Escort, lockbox, or tenant-present — your call, per property. Units that cannot be accessed on the first pass are re-attempted and then logged as no-access, so a missed unit is a documented fact rather than a gap.
Per-unit service, photographed
One line per unit, written as the unit is worked: number, appliance type, what was done, what was found, and the photos behind the finding. Where a flue or appliance is unsafe, it is red-tagged and locked out with written notice to the resident and to you, so it cannot be used while it waits for repair.
Risk-ranked roll-up
Findings come back ranked — take out of service now, repair this budget cycle, monitor at next rotation — with the estimate attached to each. The ranking is the point: it tells you which units get the money first and gives you a defensible answer for why the others waited.
One invoice, and the next rotation on the calendar
Billed per property or consolidated across the portfolio, whichever your accounting prefers, with the per-unit detail attached. The next rotation is scheduled before we leave so the program runs on a calendar instead of on memory.
The part that actually goes wrong.
Every vendor can clean a fireplace. Getting into a hundred occupied units, on notice, without a stack of complaints landing on your desk, is the part that separates a program from a promise. Here is exactly how we handle it.
- Dated notice issued per unit, to the window your lease and state notice requirements set — we do not improvise entry.
- Escorted, lockbox, or tenant-present entry, chosen per property with your site staff, not per technician.
- Booties and drop cloths in every occupied unit, HEPA containment at the firebox, and the room left the way we found it.
- A second attempt on every unit that misses the first pass, at a different time of day.
- No-access units logged by unit number with the dates attempted, so the roll-up shows exactly what was and was not serviced.
- Pets, work-from-home schedules, and refused entry handled as normal operating conditions, not as reasons to skip the unit quietly.
The record is the deliverable.
A property manager is judged on what they can produce later, not on what happened that Tuesday. Everything below exists so the answer to “was unit 214 serviced, and what did you find?” takes ten seconds.
Per-unit service record
One line per unit: number, appliance type, work performed, findings, technician, date. This is the record that answers an owner or a resident six months later.
Photo evidence per finding
Time-stamped photos behind every finding and every completed unit — not a building-level 'cleaned' receipt that proves nothing about unit 214.
Risk-ranked findings list
Every finding ranked take-out-of-service / repair this cycle / monitor, with an estimate attached, so capital lands on the worst units first.
Red-tag and lock-out trail
Where an appliance or flue is unsafe, the tag, the lock-out, and the written resident notice are all on file — evidence the property acted on what it found.
Portfolio roll-up
A property-by-property summary an owner or asset manager can read without opening the unit detail, with the ranked repair total per property.
Compliance packet
COI, additional-insured endorsement, and W-9 on file and refreshed on renewal, delivered into your vendor portal in the format your company requires.
Priced per property, after a walkthrough.
A portfolio price quoted off a unit count is a guess. What actually drives the number is appliance mix, chase and shared-flue layout, access difficulty, and how long it has been since anyone looked. We walk the property, inventory the assets, and quote the rotation per property — with per-unit line pricing inside it so an owner can see the math.
Sweep and documented condition check on a standard unit, inside a scheduled property rotation.
Documented condition and photo record without a sweep — the baseline pass on a portfolio nobody has assessed yet.
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.
Where a task is licensed work — gas, electrical, structural — a license holder does it or puts their name to it, at whatever standard your city has adopted.
Tell us the properties. We will scope the rotation.
Property type, approximate unit count, how many of those units have a fireplace, and the ZIP codes. That is enough for us to come back with a walkthrough date and the shape of the program. Send the onboarding requirements with it and the COI packet is ready before we arrive.
Request a compliance quote
Single-site, multifamily, or national portfolio — tell us the system and the sites.
Property managers — FAQ
Can you reach occupied units without my site staff running the whole thing?
We build the route and issue the dated notices; your staff approves the windows and tells us the entry method for that property — escort, lockbox, or tenant-present. Every unit that misses the first pass gets a second attempt at a different time of day, and anything still unreachable is logged by unit number with the dates attempted. Your team's job is to approve the plan, not to chase residents.
Can we get one invoice per property, or one for the whole portfolio?
Either. Billing follows how your accounting is structured — per property, per owner entity, or one consolidated portfolio invoice — with the per-unit detail attached underneath so an owner can see what they paid for at unit level.
When the budget is short, which repairs go first?
Every finding is ranked: take out of service now, repair this budget cycle, or monitor until the next rotation, each with an estimate attached. Anything that is an active fire or carbon-monoxide risk is red-tagged and locked out on the spot regardless of budget. That ranking is what sends the spend to the units in the worst condition, and it leaves you a written reason for why the rest waited.
What does an owner actually receive?
A property roll-up they can read in a couple of minutes — what was serviced, what was found, what it ranks as, and what the ranked repairs total — with the per-unit records and photos underneath if they want to go deeper. An owner or an insurer can receive it exactly as we hand it over, with nothing needing translation first.
Are you already set up as an approved vendor?
Proof of coverage, an endorsement listing your entities, and a completed tax form are all issued to whatever your company's onboarding specifies, then loaded into your vendor portal before the first walkthrough. If your onboarding needs something beyond that packet, tell us during scoping and it goes in with the rest.
What happens when a unit is genuinely unsafe and the resident still wants to use it?
It gets red-tagged and locked out, with written notice to the resident and to you, and it stays that way until it is repaired and re-inspected. That decision is not negotiable and it is documented, because an appliance that was known to be unsafe and left in service is the worst position a property can be in.
Do you handle the gas and electrical side of a repair?
Where a task is licensed work — gas, electrical, structural — a license holder does it or puts their name to it, at whatever standard your city has adopted. Everything within our own trade is done by our crew, and where a licensed trade has to carry the work, that sign-off is part of the record you receive.
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