How Flint Chimney Co Pasadena Was Born in Pasadena
Bringing Flint Chimney Sweep to Pasadena wasn’t a marketing decision made in a boardroom. It started with a pattern we kept seeing in homes across the San Gabriel Valley. Homeowners would call us out after another company had already been through, and what we found made our stomachs turn. Liners that were never actually inspected, just hosed down and called clean. Caps that were “repaired” with caulk and a shrug. Prices that doubled between the estimate and the invoice. The final straw came at a craftsman bungalow near Bungalow Heaven, where a homeowner showed us an invoice from a competitor for a full relining job. The liner was original, cracked in three places, and had clearly never been touched. They’d paid for work that didn’t exist. That was the day we knew Pasadena deserved a Flint branch. The brand already had the discipline, the written-price rule, the year-long guarantee. What this city needed was a local team that would actually live it.
So we built one. We learned which Pasadena homes still have their original 1920s clay flues, which ones got steel liners in the 1980s that are now rusting at the seams, and which neighborhoods deal with creosote buildup differently because of the tree cover and how close the foothills sit. We didn’t hang a shingle and hope. We opened with a promise: every job priced in writing before work starts, every inspection documented with photos, and nothing sold that the homeowner can’t see with their own eyes. That standard comes from Flint Chimney Sweep, but the hands doing the work are here, in Pasadena, every day.
Hank Delano’s Personal Connection to the Chimney Cleaning Trade
Hank Delano came to chimney work through a route that would surprise most people: he started as a homeowner who got burned by a bad sweep. The first chimney he ever owned was in a small house with a wood-burning fireplace that hadn’t been used in years. He called a company, watched a technician spend twenty minutes running a brush up the flue, and got handed a bill that felt too high for what he’d watched. A year later, a different company actually took the time to scope the chimney and found the first guy had missed a blockage behind the smoke shelf. That blockage had been forcing carbon monoxide back into the house every time a fire was lit. The difference between those two technicians wasn’t talent, it was discipline. One followed a process. One didn’t.
That got under his skin. So he started learning, and he learned the slow way. He worked with tradesmen who treated a chimney as a system, not a tube. He learned what creosote smells like in its three stages, from the flaky black dust of Stage One to the hard, shiny tar-glaze of Stage Three that laughs at a standard brush. He learned the sound a cracked flue tile makes when you tap it, and the feel of a damper that’s been rusted open for a decade. The work stuck because it’s honest work. You can see the before and after. You can show a homeowner a photo of what was inside their chimney and watch them understand, in about two seconds, why it matters. He’s been at this for more than twenty years now, and the part that still gets him out of bed is the same thing that hooked him in the beginning: this trade rewards people who do it right, and it punishes people who cut corners, and the homeowner is the one who pays for every corner that got cut.
If he weren’t doing this, he’d probably be restoring something old. A car, a piece of furniture, a house. The same instinct is there: find the problem, fix it properly, leave it better than you found it. Chimney work just happens to come with the added reward of making someone’s home safer while you’re at it.
Meet Hank Delano – The Person Behind Every Job
Hank Delano is the Owner & Founder of Flint Chimney Co Pasadena. He leads a local team that follows the Flint Chimney Sweep standard on every job: a written price before work starts, work done by the book, and the site left clean. He’s spent more than two decades in the chimney and venting trade, and he’s the kind of person who will explain the difference between a smoke shelf and a smoke chamber if you ask, then show you photos of both so you actually know what you’re looking at. What separates him from the technician a corporate franchise sends out is pretty simple: this is his name on the work. When a Pasadena homeowner has a question a year after the job, they aren’t routed through a customer service phone tree. The call comes to us, and it gets handled like it matters, because it does. Off the clock, he’s partial to old trucks and long walks in the Arroyo Seco. He believes a man’s work should be something he can stand behind without flinching.
That belief isn’t a slogan. It’s how he runs every job, from a basic sweep in a 1950s ranch in Altadena to a full relining project in a historic Pasadena craftsman.
Our Promise to Pasadena Homeowners
Every promise this branch makes traces back to The Garrison Code, the values code every Flint Chimney Sweep location works under. It’s simple, and it’s specific: show up inside the window we gave, put the price in writing before any work starts, do the job by the book the first time, leave the site clean and squared away, and stand behind the work for a full year. That last part is the one people ask about most. If work fails within the year, we come back and make it right at no charge. It’s not a verbal promise. It’s in writing. The brand behind us, Garrison Partners, built its reputation on that standard, and we agreed to it because it’s the only way we’d want to run a chimney business in Pasadena.
We also make a promise that has nothing to do with a code: we will never sell a homeowner a liner, a cap, or a rebuild they can’t verify. Every recommendation comes with camera evidence. If something can safely wait, we say so.
Our Credentials
Flint Chimney Co Pasadena operates under the standards required by law and the higher standard set by the brand. Here’s what that means for a homeowner deciding who to let into their home:
- Licensing: Every pro working under our name is required to hold the license their state requires. We don’t send unlicensed technicians into Pasadena homes.
- Insurance: We’re insured and bonded, which protects homeowners and their property during the job.
- Experience: Hank Delano brings more than twenty years of hands-on chimney and venting work to every job this branch does.
- Reputation: This branch has built its name the slow way, one chimney at a time, across Pasadena, Altadena, San Gabriel, and the surrounding communities.
- The Garrison Standard: Every job is covered by the written one-year guarantee backed by Flint Chimney Sweep.
Licensing matters because chimney work isn’t just cleaning. It involves fire safety, carbon monoxide risk, and structural integrity. When we walk into a Pasadena home, a homeowner should know the person on the roof has the credentials and coverage the law expects. Insurance and bonding protect the homeowner if something goes wrong. The written guarantee means the job has to be done right the first time, because coming back to fix it at our own expense is not how we want to spend a Tuesday.
Rooted in Pasadena
We work in Bungalow Heaven, Normandie Heights, Madison Heights, and the neighborhoods that stretch up toward the San Gabriel Mountains in Altadena. We know that older Pasadena homes have chimneys built to different codes than the mid-century tracts in East Pasadena, and we treat each one accordingly. The Rose Bowl, the Colorado Street Bridge, the parade traffic on New Year’s Day, the way everyone’s chimney works a little harder in January when the evenings turn cold and damp: that’s the city we live and work in. We don’t just serve Pasadena. We’re part of it.
Written by Hank Delano, Owner & Founder at Flint Chimney Co Pasadena, serving Pasadena and the San Gabriel Valley since 2002.