How Sterling Chimney Cleaning Yonkers Was Born in Yonkers
It was a Tuesday morning in February 2013, and we were standing in a living room on Warburton Avenue watching a Yonkers homeowner cry. Not from smoke damage — from the estimate she’d just been handed by another chimney company. $4,200 for a “complete rebuild” they said she needed immediately. She was a retired teacher on a fixed income. Her husband had passed three months earlier. She didn’t have $4,200, and she didn’t have anyone to call for a second opinion.
We weren’t Sterling Chimney Cleaning then. We were just Gary, working as a subcontractor for one of the bigger outfits, driving their van, wearing their logo. We’d seen this before — the inflated estimates, the manufactured urgency, the commissions paid to techs who upsold repairs that weren’t needed. But something about that morning broke something open. We went back that evening, on our own time, with our own tools. Took us forty minutes to find the real problem: a cracked flue tile, maybe $340 in materials and labor. We fixed it for cost. She made us coffee we’d didn’t drink because we were running late, and she held our hand on her porch and said, “Why doesn’t anyone else do it this way?”
Two weeks later, we filed the paperwork for Sterling Chimney Cleaning Yonkers. The name wasn’t focus-grouped — it was Gary’s grandmother’s maiden name, and she was the one who taught him that a person’s word should mean something. We made three promises that day, and we’ve kept them for eleven years: we’ll tell you the truth about what your chimney needs, we’ll charge you fairly for what we do, and we’ll never sell you something you don’t need. Yonkers has enough pressure without us adding to it.
Gary Murphy’s Personal Connection to the Chimney Cleaning Trade
People always ask how we got into this line of work, and the honest answer is: we fell into it backward and found we couldn’t leave. Gary was twenty-three, living in a converted garage apartment in Wakefield, working nights at a warehouse near the Cross County Parkway. The landlord was a guy named Sal who did chimney work on the side. One October morning, Sal’s regular helper didn’t show — family emergency, something about a sister in Florida. Sal knocked on our door at 6 AM with coffee that tasted like burnt metal and asked if we wanted to make eighty bucks helping him sweep a flue in Bronxville.
We remember everything about that day. The smell of creosote, which hits you like a wall of old campfire and something darker, something chemical. The weight of the brushes, heavier than they look, and the way you have to twist your wrist just so to get past the smoke shelf. The light coming through the chimney top, this perfect circle of October blue, and the sound of Sal’s voice from below: “Slow, kid. This isn’t a race.” We were covered in soot by 10 AM, and Sal bought us breakfast at a diner on White Plains Road, and we talked for two hours about draft patterns and flue sizing and why most chimney fires happen in January, not December, because people get lazy about their wood.
That winter, we helped Sal on weekends. The next spring, we got our own truck — a ’98 Ford with 180,000 miles and a cracked windshield. We started taking jobs Sal didn’t want, the small ones, the ones in Mount Vernon and Woodlawn where people didn’t have money for the big companies. We learned to listen. An older woman in Tuckahoe who could smell gas every time she ran her fireplace — turned out her neighbor had installed the wrong damper. A family in Eastchester with a newborn, terrified of carbon monoxide, whose liner was fine but whose cap was missing, letting rain in for two years.
Here’s what we learned: chimneys are intimate. You’re in someone’s home, often in their basement, sometimes in their bedroom if the flue runs through a chase. You see how people live. You see the water stains, the patched drywall, the framed photos. You become part of their routine for a morning. If we weren’t doing this, we’d probably be doing something else with our hands — woodworking, maybe, or restoring old boats. But we’d miss the conversations. We’d miss the moment when someone understands how their house works, when the fear drains out of their face because you’ve shown them exactly what’s wrong and exactly how you’ll fix it. That’s what gets us out of bed. Not the money — though the money’s fine — but the feeling of being useful in a specific way, in a specific place, to people who remember your name.
Eleven years later, we still smell that first creosote hit sometimes, early in the morning, first job of the day. It still smells like the beginning of something.
Meet Gary Murphy — The Person Behind Every Job
Gary Murphy, Owner & Lead Technician
We’re the person who answers the phone, drives the truck, climbs the ladder, and writes the invoice. We don’t have a call center. We don’t send employees we haven’t personally trained. When you schedule with Sterling Chimney Cleaning Yonkers, you’re getting Gary Murphy — eleven years of hands-on experience, trained in NFPA 211 standards, certified through the Chimney Safety Institute of America, and stubborn enough to check every flue tile with a flashlight even when we’re running behind.
What makes us different from a franchise tech? We own the mistakes. If we scratch your mantel, we fix it. If we miss something, we come back. No corporate policy to hide behind, no regional manager to blame. Our name is on the truck, and our grandmother’s name is on the company.
Outside of work, we’re usually somewhere on the Hudson River with a fishing rod that doesn’t see enough action, or in our garage restoring a 1974 Honda CB750 that should probably be in a museum by now. The patience that project requires — the willingness to take something apart completely before you understand what’s wrong — that’s the same patience we bring to your chimney. We don’t rush. We don’t guess. And we don’t leave until we’ve explained exactly what we found and exactly what it means for your home.
Our commitment to you is simple: we’ll treat your house like it’s our mother’s house. Not because it sounds good on a website, but because we don’t know any other way to work.
Our Promise to Yonkers Homeowners
Honest pricing, every time. We still remember that $4,200 estimate on Warburton Avenue. That’s why we give upfront, itemized quotes before any work begins. If we find something unexpected — a hidden crack, a blocked flue — we stop, explain, and get your approval. No surprises on the invoice, no pressure to decide on the spot. Our average repair in Yonkers runs between $180 and $650, and we’ll tell you if you’re looking at something bigger before we touch a tool.
Quality materials that last. We use HeatShield for flue resurfacing when the damage warrants it, and we source stainless steel liners from Olympia Chimney for relining jobs. We’ve seen what cheap parts do after two winters — the rust, the separation, the callbacks. We warranty our liner installations for ten years because we know the work, and we know the materials.
We stand behind every job. In 2019, we relined a chimney in Wykagyl. The homeowner called six months later — slight draft issue, nothing dangerous, but not right. We were there the next morning. Turned out a factory defect in the cap, not our installation, but we replaced it at no charge anyway. That’s our policy: if you’re not satisfied, we’re not finished. Period.
Our Credentials
- State-licensed chimney contractor in New York
- Insured & bonded — full liability and workers’ compensation coverage
- 11+ years serving Yonkers and surrounding Westchester County communities
- 1,142 verified reviews averaging 4.7 out of 5 stars
- CSIA-certified technician on every job
These aren’t decorations — they’re protections. A state license means we’ve met New York’s standards for competency and accountability. Insurance and bonding mean if something goes wrong in your home, you’re not chasing us for compensation or relying on your own homeowner’s policy. Those 1,142 reviews represent real Yonkers-area homeowners who’ve let us into their basements, their attics, their living rooms — and been willing to put their names to what they experienced. In a trade where you’re inviting someone to work on the system that vents smoke and carbon monoxide out of your house, that track record matters more than any slogan we could write.
Rooted in Yonkers
We’ve swept chimneys in the Victorian homes of Lawrence Park, the post-war splits of Crestwood, the apartment buildings along McLean Avenue, and the new construction popping up near the waterfront. We’ve worked through the Yonkers Riverfest when the streets were closed and we had to park six blocks away. We’ve bought coffee at the same Getty Square bodega after early morning jobs for eleven years. Our kids went to school with kids from Hastings-on-Hudson and Eastchester — the same towns where we’ve serviced fireplaces for their grandparents. This isn’t territory we cover. It’s home. And we plan to be here long enough to sweep the same flues twice.
Written by Gary Murphy, Owner at Sterling Chimney Cleaning Yonkers, serving Yonkers since 2013.