How Top Hat Chimney Was Born in Hempstead
Top Hat Chimney didn’t start in Hempstead with a grand opening banner or a ribbon cutting. It started with a quiet observation Wendell Pike kept making, year after year, as he worked chimneys across Nassau County. Homeowners in Hempstead would show him invoices from other companies. Some of those invoices were honest. Too many were not. He’d see charges for liner replacements that turned out to be unnecessary when he put the camera down the flue. He’d see “full rebuild” recommendations on chimneys that needed repointing and nothing more. The pattern bothered him more than the individual jobs did.
When the opportunity came to bring Top Hat Chimney’s standards to Hempstead, Wendell saw exactly what the branch needed to be. Not another outfit running volume through a call sheet. A local operation where the person who inspects your chimney is the same person whose name is on the work. Where the camera footage gets shown to you, not hidden behind a clipboard. Where the verdict is plain English: this needs doing now, this can wait, this doesn’t need doing at all. The brand’s promise was already built on that honesty. The Hempstead branch opened to deliver it block by block.
Wendell Pike’s Personal Connection to the Chimney Cleaning Trade
Wendell Pike fell into chimney work the way a lot of tradespeople do: through the side door, on a job that had nothing to do with chimneys. He was doing general home repair when a homeowner in Hempstead asked him to take a look at a fireplace that smoked back into the living room every time she lit it. Wendell went up on the roof, pulled the cap, and looked down. What he saw explained the problem immediately. The flue was packed with creosote so thick it had changed the shape of the passage. The damper was rusted a third of the way shut. The woman had been told by a previous company that she needed a new fireplace insert, thousands of dollars, when what she actually needed was a proper sweep and a damper repair that took an afternoon.
That job stayed with him. Not because it was complicated, but because of how simple the truth had been. The chimney was telling him exactly what was wrong. He just had to look. Over the years since, that’s become the core of how Wendell works. Every inspection is a conversation with the masonry, the flue, the cap, the crown. You learn to read soot the way a mechanic reads an engine. First-degree creosote is a brush job. Third-degree is a glaze, and you catch it early. The smell of a chimney tells you things before you even set the ladder. Dry, flaky creosote sounds different under the brush than the glossy, hardened kind. Wendell can walk into a room in January and know from the draft pattern whether the flue is doing its job.
What gets him out of bed isn’t the technical side, though. It’s the people. The homeowner in Garden City who’s owned the same house for forty years and wants to know the truth about whether the fireplace is still safe for grandchildren. The family in West Hempstead who just moved in and has no idea when the chimney was last inspected. Wendell likes being the person who can look them in the eye and tell them what’s real. If he weren’t doing this, he’d probably still be fixing things, still climbing onto roofs, still solving problems one house at a time. The hat would just be less interesting.
The Name and the Hat
The top hat isn’t a marketing gimmick. The sweep in the top hat is the oldest good-luck figure in the chimney trade, going back centuries. Wendell wears one to the door. Kids remember it. Adults smile at it. And it makes a point before any words are exchanged: this is someone who takes the trade seriously enough to honor its traditions, and personally enough to wear the symbol of it on his own head. It’s hard to hide behind a clipboard when you’re standing in someone’s doorway wearing a top hat.
Meet Wendell Pike - The Person Behind Every Job
Wendell Pike is the Owner & Founder of Top Hat Chimney’s Hempstead branch. He has spent more than a decade working on chimneys across Nassau County, learning the trade the slow, thorough way: on roofs in every season, behind brushes in flues of every age, with a camera in hand so homeowners can see exactly what he sees. His background is residential repair and service work, which means he came to chimneys understanding the house as a whole system, not an isolated masonry stack.
What sets Wendell apart from a franchise technician is simple: he lives here. He knows which Hempstead neighborhoods have pre-war masonry that needs different care than newer construction. He knows what the salt air and freeze-thaw cycles do to crowns within a few miles of the shore. He’s going to run into you at the hardware store on a Saturday. That’s the oldest accountability mechanism there is, and Wendell wouldn’t trade it for anything. His commitment is direct: when you call Top Hat Chimney in Hempstead, the work is done to the standard of a man who puts his own name on it.
Our Promise to Hempstead Homeowners
Top Hat Chimney’s promise, stamped on every page and backed by the brand, is this: Wendell Pike publishes his name, his address, and his license number, and answers his own phone. Ninety days in writing on every chimney job, and one call brings him back. That’s not a slogan. It’s a working rule.
But the promise goes deeper than the guarantee. Honest pricing means the quote you get is the price you pay, no phone price and door price surprises. Quality parts means we use reputable manufacturers like HeatShield, Olympia Chimney, and Famco when repairs are needed, never whatever’s cheapest on the truck. Standing behind every job means if something isn’t right, Wendell wants to know about it. He’d rather come back and make it right than have you quietly tell a neighbor it wasn’t. A customer who stays for twenty years beats a one-time big ticket every time.
The L.O.C.A.L. Code
We work by a code, and we call it L.O.C.A.L. It’s five values, each one chosen because it actually means something:
- Local roots: An address in this county, not a call center three states away.
- On time: The window we give you is the window. If it slips, we call.
- Community first: We hire here, we buy here, we support the town here.
- Accountable: The owner puts his name on the work and answers the phone.
- Loyal: We’d rather keep you for twenty years than win one big ticket.
Our Credentials
Every pro working under the Top Hat Chimney name is held to the brand’s standards, not just the local minimum. When you hire us in Hempstead, here’s what stands behind the work:
- Licensed: The license our state requires for chimney work is held and maintained. We’ll show it to you if you ask.
- Insured & Bonded: Coverage is in place to protect you and your home while we’re on the job.
- Experienced: Wendell has spent more than a decade working chimneys in Nassau County’s specific climate and housing stock.
- Locally Reputable: Our business is built on neighbors telling neighbors. Ask anyone on your street.
Why does this matter to you, the homeowner? Because the person walking into your home to work on a system that carries fire and carbon monoxide out of your house should be someone you can verify. A license means they’ve met a standard. Insurance means you’re protected if something goes wrong. Local experience means they know the specific ways Hempstead houses age. And a local reputation means there’s a record of doing right by people. That’s the whole point.
Rooted in Hempstead
Top Hat Chimney’s Hempstead branch serves the neighborhoods we actually drive through every day: Hempstead, Garden City, Franklin Square, Westbury, Uniondale, West Hempstead, Mineola, Roosevelt, Floral Park, North Merrick, New Hyde Park, and Williston Park. Wendell lives close enough that when a customer in Uniondale calls, he knows the block. When a homeowner in Franklin Square describes an issue, he can picture the housing stock. This isn’t a service area drawn on a map. It’s home ground.
When you call Top Hat Chimney, a live coordinator answers and connects you with the local team. You won’t navigate a phone tree. You won’t talk to someone reading from a script three time zones away. You’ll talk to a person who understands that the chimney in your living room is part of your home, not a ticket number.
We’d rather show you than tell you. Call (516) 963-1068 and we’ll schedule a sweep or inspection at a time that works for you. Our hours are Monday through Friday, 7:30 AM to 7:30 PM, and Saturday and Sunday, 8:30 AM to 7:30 PM. When Wendell finishes, you’ll see the camera footage yourself, and you’ll get a plain-English answer about what your chimney needs, what can wait, and what doesn’t need doing at all.
Written by Wendell Pike, Owner at Top Hat Chimney, serving Hempstead, NY and the surrounding Nassau County communities since 1999.