How Ashby Chimney Fort Lauderdale Was Born in Fort Lauderdale
Bringing Ashby Chimney Sweep to Fort Lauderdale started with a phone call that still sticks with us. A homeowner in Plantation had just paid another company for a full chimney cleaning and rebuild estimate. The crew showed up, pointed at some discoloration from a distance, and told her the flue needed to be torn out and replaced. No camera. No photos. Just a number on a clipboard and a hard deadline to sign. She called us for a second opinion, and after a real inspection, the flue was structurally sound. It needed a proper sweep, nothing more.
That moment shaped everything about how this branch opened. Fort Lauderdale has thousands of homes with real masonry fireplaces and older flues, and too many homeowners here have been handed a repair quote they had no way to verify. Ashby Chimney Sweep was already the Kingswell family’s chimney cleaning company, built on one idea: the sweep that shows you the flue. We opened the Fort Lauderdale branch to bring that standard here. Written price before any work starts. Camera evidence before any recommendation. A guarantee in writing. That’s the only way we want to operate in this city.
Nathan Corliss’s Personal Connection to the Chimney Cleaning Trade
Nathan Corliss came into this trade the way a lot of people find their life’s work: through a job he didn’t expect to love. He started out helping on a crew as a second set of hands, hauling drop cloths and handing up brushes, and the first thing that caught his attention was how the older sweeps could tell you, almost by smell, what was wrong with a flue. Sour smoke, the sharp bite of creosote that had gone glassy, the faint metallic note that meant a damp flue. Most trades have a language you learn. This one, he realized, you learn with your hands and your nose and your eyes, not just a checklist.
What kept him in it was what the work actually gave back. A chimney that drafts right changes a whole room. The fire settles in, the smoke goes where it should, and the house feels different. Nathan’s done this work for more than ten years now, and what he still cares about is the moment the camera goes up the flue and the homeowner sees what he sees. No guesswork. He’d tell you the best part of the job is leaving a fireplace safer than he found it. If he weren’t doing this, he’d probably be working with his hands somewhere outdoors, but he’s never found a reason to leave. The smell of a cold fireplace the first morning it gets lit in the fall never gets old.
Meet Nathan Corliss – The Person Behind Every Job
Nathan Corliss is the Owner & Founder of the Fort Lauderdale branch of Ashby Chimney Sweep. He’s been in the chimney trade for more than ten years, through every type of flue trouble South Florida weather can create, and he leads the local team here with one rule: if we can’t show you the problem on camera, we don’t ask you to pay to fix it. That’s not a slogan. It’s how he works.
He’s the person walking your roof and running the camera, not a clipboard handed off to whoever shows up. When he’s not in a flue, you’ll find him on the water. Fort Lauderdale’s canals and shoreline are his reset button. And his commitment to you is simple: he treats every fireplace like it’s in his own family’s home, because in this city, that’s not a hypothetical. It’s the standard.
Our Promise to Fort Lauderdale Homeowners
We work to the Kingswell Guarantee, and it’s not fine print. It’s four things, stated plainly. Say the price before the work. Show up in the window we gave. Leave the place cleaner than we found it. Put the guarantee in writing. If a repair we made fails inside the guarantee period, we come back and fix it at no charge.
That guarantee comes from the Kingswell family, the people behind Ashby Chimney Sweep. This Fort Lauderdale branch is independently owned and operated, but we agreed to work to that standard when we opened here. Honest pricing isn’t a marketing angle for us. It’s the reason the branch exists. You’ll get a written price before any work starts, and we don’t recommend a liner or masonry repair unless we can show you why on camera.
Our Credentials
- State-licensed. Every pro working under our name is required to hold the license and insurance their state requires. We don’t wave vague assurances at you; we expect documentation, and so should you.
- Insured & bonded. This protects your home and gives you recourse if something goes wrong. A homeowner should never let a contractor without insurance onto their property.
- More than ten years of hands-on experience in the chimney trade. Nathan Corliss has worked flues in every condition South Florida’s humidity and salt air can create, and that experience means the diagnosis is fast and the recommendation is honest.
- Strong local reputation. We earn the trust of Fort Lauderdale homeowners job by job, not through a marketing budget. Ask neighbors. Look at how we answer.
Why these matter: a license means the person on your roof has met real standards, not just printed a business card. Insurance means your family isn’t left holding a bill if something breaks. Experience means we’ve seen the weird stuff, the rusted dampers, the nests, the cracked tiles, and we know what to do about it.
Rooted in Fort Lauderdale
We work all over the Fort Lauderdale area, from the older homes near Victoria Park to the newer builds out in Cooper City and Plantation. We know the salt air near the Intracoastal makes dampers rust a little faster, and we know a football Sunday in Weston can smell like charcoal smoke before the grills even get hot. This isn’t a territory. It’s where we live, eat, and raise our own smoke on cooler nights.
Written by Nathan Corliss, Owner at Ashby Chimney Fort Lauderdale, serving Fort Lauderdale and the surrounding communities.