How Premier Chimney Cleaning Connecticut Was Born in Connecticut
It was a Tuesday morning in late October, and Anthony Perez was standing in a living room in West Hartford watching a retired schoolteacher write a check for $4,200. The woman had been told her chimney was “condemned” and needed a full liner replacement immediately. Anthony, working as a subcontractor for another company at the time, knew the flue had minor cracks that a HeatShield application could seal for a fraction of that cost. But his boss had instructed him to upsell the full job. He watched her hands shake as she signed.
That night, Anthony called his wife from a parking lot off I-84 and said, “I can’t do this anymore. I can’t look people in the eye and lie about their chimneys.” He’d spent three years watching Connecticut homeowners get bullied with scare tactics—Hartford families told their fireplaces were “imminent fire hazards,” Bridgeport landlords charged for “emergency” cleanings that weren’t emergencies at all. The industry treated chimneys like mystery boxes, counting on customers not knowing better.
Anthony made a promise that night: he’d build a company where technicians explained what they saw, showed homeowners the evidence, and fixed only what actually needed fixing. No commissioned sales. no invented emergencies. Just honest work from someone who treated every house like his mother’s. Premier Chimney Cleaning Connecticut started the next spring with a used van, a borrowed brush set, and that single promise.
Anthony Perez’s Personal Connection to the Chimney Cleaning Trade
Anthony didn’t grow up dreaming about flue liners. He grew up in a drafty East Hartford duplex where his grandfather, a Portuguese stonemason named Luis, spent every Saturday morning tending to the brick fireplace that heated their whole first floor. Anthony was six when Luis first lifted him up to peer inside the smoke chamber. He remembers the smell—old wood ash and something mineral, like wet stone—and the way the morning light came down the flue in a thin, dusty column. “A chimney is the lungs of a house,” Luis told him. “You don’t neglect the lungs.”
By fourteen, Anthony was climbing their extension ladder to help his grandfather brush out the flue before the first fire of the season. The work felt meditative: the scrape of polypropylene bristles against clay tile, the soft thud of soot falling into the firebox, the satisfaction of running a flashlight up a clean passage and seeing nothing but smooth, dark walls. He liked that it was invisible work that kept people safe. No one applauded a clean chimney. They just slept warm and didn’t die of carbon monoxide poisoning.
Anthony tried other paths—community college, a brief stint in HVAC—but he kept coming back to chimneys. There’s a moment he describes from his first solo job, eight-plus years ago now, in a Waterbury cape cod built in 1952. The homeowner, a widower named Mr. Castellano, hadn’t used his fireplace in fifteen years because the last company told him it was “too far gone.” Anthony found a bird’s nest, two cracked flue tiles, and a damper frozen with rust. Nothing that couldn’t be fixed. He worked until dark, cleaned everything by hand because his rotary tool had broken, and lit the first fire with Mr. Castellano at 9 PM. The old man sat in his armchair and didn’t speak for ten minutes, just watched the flames. Then he said, “My wife used to sit right here.”
That’s what gets Anthony out of bed. Not the technical challenge, though he loves that too. It’s the moment when someone gets back a part of their home they thought was lost. If he weren’t doing this, he’d probably be teaching trade skills somewhere, or working with his hands in some other forgotten corner of residential construction. But he’s here, in Connecticut, because this work lets him be the person his grandfather raised him to be.
Meet Anthony Perez — The Person Behind Every Job
Anthony Perez is the Owner & Lead Technician at Premier Chimney Cleaning Connecticut. For 8-plus years, he’s personally serviced chimneys across every corner of the state—from Stamford colonials to New Haven triple-deckers to the shoreline cottages in Old Greenwich and Riverside. He’s certified through the Chimney Safety Institute of America and trained in advanced flue repair systems including HeatShield cerfractory sealant and stainless steel relining with Olympia Chimney products.
What separates Anthony from a franchise technician is simple: he’s the one who answers your call, drives to your house, climbs your roof, and stands behind the work. He still carries a flashlight his grandfather gave him, dented and dim but functional, in his tool bag every day. On weekends, you’ll find him coaching youth soccer in West Hartford or restoring vintage fishing rods—patience work, he calls it, the same patience he brings to a stubborn chimney rebuild.
His personal commitment to you: “When I’m in your home, I work like my grandmother is watching. No shortcuts, no surprises, no leaving until I’d let my own family light that fireplace.”
Our Promise to Connecticut Homeowners
Honest pricing, always itemized. After that West Hartford schoolteacher, Anthony instituted a policy: every quote breaks down labor, materials, and optional upgrades separately. You’ll never see a single vague number designed to obscure what’s actually being charged.
Quality parts we trust with our own families. We specify HeatShield for ceramic flue resurfacing, Gelco caps for corrosion resistance in Connecticut’s freeze-thaw cycles, and Famco dampers when replacement is necessary. We don’t install anything we wouldn’t put in our own homes.
We stand behind every job without argument. In our third year, a liner we installed in Cos Cob developed a pinhole leak due to a manufacturing defect. The manufacturer fought us. We replaced the entire liner at our own expense anyway, because the homeowner had trusted us. That policy hasn’t changed.
Our Credentials
- State-licensed chimney contractor, fully compliant with Connecticut Department of Consumer Protection requirements
- Insured & bonded for residential and commercial work—your property and our team are protected on every job
- 8+ years in continuous operation, serving Connecticut homeowners since 2016
- 800 verified reviews averaging 4.7 out of 5 stars across Google, Yelp, and industry platforms
These aren’t decorations—they’re protections. A state license means we’ve passed background checks and competency requirements, not just paid a fee. Insurance and bonding means if something goes wrong in your Oakville ranch or your West Haven bungalow, you’re not paying for it. Eight years in business means we’ve seen Connecticut’s full seasonal cycle on chimneys: the spring freeze-thaw damage, the summer moisture intrusion, the fall rush when everyone tries to book at once. And 800 reviews at 4.7 stars means real neighbors, in real neighborhoods, felt good enough about our work to take time and say so.
Rooted in Connecticut
We’ve swept chimneys in Hartford’s historic Asylum Hill, relined flues in Bridgeport’s Black Rock neighborhood, and capped chimneys overlooking Long Island Sound in Stamford. Anthony’s kids attend school in the same district where he coaches, and his wife volunteers with the local food share in East Hartford. We’ve sponsored the West Hartford Little League opening day and donated cleanings to veterans’ families through a New Haven nonprofit. Connecticut isn’t where we work—it’s where we live, where we raised our family, where we’ll retire. Every chimney we service belongs to a neighbor. We don’t forget that.
Written by Anthony Perez, Owner at Premier Chimney Cleaning Connecticut, serving Connecticut since 2016. Call (833) 719-7193 for an appointment.