How Top Hat Chimney Came to Westchester County
Wendell Pike didn’t wake up one morning planning to run a chimney company. He was already in the trade, working for someone else, watching the same pattern repeat itself across Westchester County year after year. A homeowner would call for a routine sweep, the tech would arrive, and within twenty minutes there’d be a clipboard and a quote for a new liner, a new crown, a rebuilt firebox. Thousands of dollars. The homeowner had no way to verify any of it because they were standing in their living room while the problem was forty feet up.
The moment that stuck with him happened in White Plains. An older woman had just buried her husband. A company had told her she needed a full liner replacement. She was ready to take out a loan. Wendell got up on the roof, ran the camera, and found a half-inch of light creosote. Nothing more. The liner had years left. He cleaned it, handed her the footage, and told her exactly that. She cried. Not because of the money, but because for the first time someone had shown her the truth instead of just telling her a scary story. That was the job where the decision got made. Westchester County deserved a chimney company that led with evidence, not fear. Top Hat Chimney’s standards were a natural fit, and the branch opened with one promise: show the camera, tell the truth, charge for what was actually needed.
Wendell Pike’s Personal Connection to the Chimney Cleaning Trade
Wendell Pike has been climbing roofs and running chimney cameras in Westchester County since 1999. That’s not a line on a brochure. It’s twenty-plus winters of ice on slate, squirrels in flues, and the particular smell of wet creosote in a March thaw. The trade got into him the way it gets into most people who stick with it: not through glamour, but through problem-solving. A chimney is a simple machine. Air in, smoke out, heat contained. When it stops working the way it should, there’s a reason. Finding that reason, putting your eyes on it, and fixing it properly is honest work. You see the result immediately.
What keeps him in it is the rhythm of it. The phone starts ringing in September in Mount Vernon and New Rochelle, the first cold snap in Pelham and Rye sends everyone to their fireplaces at once, and by December he knows half the chimneys in Harrison and Eastchester by sight. He’ll tell you he knows which flue in Mamaroneck needs a third-degree creosote glaze removed every other season, and which one in Scarsdale only needs a brush every two years. “Your flue doesn’t care how the fire looks,” he says. “It cares how it breathes.” That’s the whole job in one sentence, and it’s the thing he’d still be doing even if he weren’t running the company. He’d be on a roof somewhere in Bedford, camera in hand, telling someone their chimney is fine and they should keep their money. Doing it under the Top Hat name just means the brand behind him holds the same line.
Meet Wendell Pike - The Person Behind Every Job
Wendell Pike is the Owner and Founder of the Westchester County branch of Top Hat Chimney. He apprenticed in the chimney and venting trade back when clay tile liners were still the default and stainless steel was the new conversation. Trained in NFPA 211 standards, he brings that code knowledge to every inspection he runs. There’s no corporate franchise technician here. There’s Wendell, his truck, his camera, and a name he answers to at the hardware store in Tarrytown on a Saturday morning.
He’s the kind of person who keeps a logbook of every chimney he’s worked on. Not because anyone requires it, but because he wants to remember what he saw last year and what it looked like five years before that. When he’s not working, he’s usually outside, usually in the county he works in. The hat isn’t a prop. The sweep in the top hat is the oldest good-luck figure in the trade, and Wendell actually wears one to the door. It’s a straight line from 1999 to now, and he’ll be the one climbing your roof.
Our Promise to Westchester County Homeowners
Every job starts with a camera and ends with a plain-English verdict. That’s the promise, and it’s not negotiable. If your chimney needs a sweep, you’ll see the creosote on the screen before anyone asks for a dime. If your liner is cracking, you’ll see the crack. If your crown is failing, you’ll see the spalling. Nothing gets recommended that doesn’t have evidence behind it. “Once a year, burn or no burn,” Wendell tells people. “Chimneys break in the off-season too.”
Pricing is a flat, written estimate before any work begins. No phone-price-then-door-price games. The ninety-day guarantee is in writing on every chimney job, and one call brings Wendell back. That’s the L.O.C.A.L. code the whole branch runs on: local roots, on time, community first, accountable, loyal. It’s not a poster in an office. It’s how the truck pulls into your driveway.
Our Credentials
What you should know before you invite anyone into your home:
- State-licensed - every pro working under the Top Hat name is required to hold the license the state requires for chimney and venting work.
- Insured & bonded - coverage is in place before the ladder leaves the truck.
- Founded in 1999 - the brand has been in the chimney trade for over two decades, and Wendell Pike has been working in Westchester County the entire time.
- Local reputation - the name on the truck is the name on the invoice, and that name is Wendell Pike’s.
Licensing matters because chimney work goes wrong invisibly. Insurance matters because roofs are high and things happen. A local reputation matters because the person who worked on your flue is going to see you at the farmers market, and that’s the oldest accountability mechanism there is.
Rooted in Westchester County
Top Hat Chimney’s Westchester branch is an address in this county, not a call center three states away. The trucks run out of a local shop, the people who answer the phone live here, and the technician who shows up probably graduated from one of the local high schools. When Wendell says he lives twenty minutes from you, he’s not making a marketing point. He’s telling you why the work has to be right.
Written by Wendell Pike, Owner at Top Hat Chimney, serving Westchester County and the surrounding communities of White Plains, Mount Vernon, New Rochelle, Harrison, Pelham, Rye, Eastchester, Mamaroneck, Scarsdale, Bedford, and Tarrytown since 1999.