Meet the Team - Level Two Chimney Oakland

Meet the Oakland Team Behind Level Two Chimney Oakland

We’re the crew that shows up in the marked van, not an unmarked truck. Every person on this page has climbed an Oakland roof, sat with a homeowner to review camera footage, and signed off on a written price before work started. What ties us together isn’t a handbook. It’s the Haven Standard, and the fact that none of us would want an unnamed stranger in our own homes.

Call (628) 300-1701

Our People

Corrine Halstead, Owner

I started Level Two Chimney in 2009 after watching too many Oakland homeowners get a verbal “ballpark” that somehow tripled once the tech was already in the living room. I built this company on a simple rule: written price, written scope, written warranty, every single time. That’s now Clause 1 of the Haven Standard. I’ve personally inspected or supervised more than 38,000 chimney visits since then, and I still catch things on camera scans that make me glad we don’t skip steps. I live in the Oakland Hills, so I know firsthand how the marine layer off the Bay accelerates crown deterioration on north-facing flues. My favorite call-back was from a Montclair homeowner who said a raccoon had better taste in chimney caps than the previous owner did. She wasn’t wrong. The raccoon chose copper. The previous owner chose painted galvanized, and we were replacing it three years later.

Marcus T., Lead Technician

Marcus has been running chimney sweeps and Level 2 inspections in Alameda County for eleven years. He’s NFPA 211 certified and specializes in masonry evaluation, particularly the spalling brick and deteriorated mortar joints we see in pre-1940s Oakland homes from Rockridge to Maxwell Park. Marcus carries a thermal imaging camera on every job, not because it’s required, but because he caught a hidden flue liner crack in a Piedmont chimney in 2019 that a standard visual would have missed. Off the clock, he restores vintage motorcycles and applies the same patience to a seized crankcase that he does to a chimney with six courses of damaged wythe. He’ll talk your ear off about either, but only if you ask.

Dana K., Senior Installer

Dana handles our liner installations, crown pours, and full rebuilds, which means she’s the one crawling into the smoke chamber with a flashlight between her teeth to verify fit before we commit to a DuraFlex or HeatShield specification. She’s been with us since 2017 and holds factory training from both Olympia Chimney and Copperfield. Dana grew up in the Laurel District and knows which Oakland neighborhoods have the clay flue liners that crack in a single seismic event versus the ones that fail slowly from thermal cycling. Her detail that matters: she keeps a notebook of every chimney she’s worked on, with sketches of unusual flue configurations. We’re pushing her to let us digitize it. She’s resisting.

James R., Service Coordinator

James is the voice you hear when you call (628) 300-1701 at 10 PM on a Sunday because you smelled something odd from the fireplace. He’s been dispatching our crews and managing schedules for four years, and he knows which technician lives closest to your neighborhood, who’s carrying the right diameter brush stock, and whether the Oakland Hills fire weather conditions will affect our route timing. James is also the person who sends your text when your technician is en route, with a name and photo attached, per the Haven Standard’s “Verified crews” requirement. He grew up in San Leandro, roots for the A’s through the rebuild, and has a genuinely impressive memory for which Oakland homes have offset flues, shared walls, or access issues we flagged on previous visits.

Aisha M., Apprentice Technician

Aisha joined us in 2023 after completing her OSHA 30 and chimney-specific safety training. She’s currently working toward her CSIA Certified Chimney Sweep credential under Marcus’s direct supervision, which in practice means she’s already handling standard sweeps and basic cap installations on single-flue systems while he reviews her photo documentation before it goes to the homeowner. Aisha grew up in West Oakland and has a particular interest in the venting challenges of converted historic properties, the kind where a 1920s fireplace was never designed for the insert a previous owner crammed in. Her first solo job was a sweep in Adams Point where she found a bird’s nest built entirely from dryer lint. She photographed it for her training log. We included it in the homeowner’s Clause 4 photo record. Everyone was impressed except the bird.

One Standard, Every Job

The Haven Standard isn’t a poster in our break room. It’s the operating system we run on, and it travels with us whether we’re working in Oakland, Berkeley, or anywhere else in the network. Every technician on this page has committed to the same clauses: written price before work starts (Clause 1), background-checked and uniformed arrival with license verification (Clause 2 and 3), documented photo record on every visit (Clause 4), and the 365-Day Done Right Promise (Clause 5). We don’t pick and choose which clauses apply based on job size or neighborhood. The homeowner in Sobrante Park gets the same photo record and upfront pricing as the homeowner in Piedmont. That’s the point of a standard. Corrine built it that way in 2009 because she couldn’t find a chimney company in Oakland that operated with the transparency she wanted as a customer herself. The crew you just read about is the reason we’ve stuck to it through 38,000 jobs and counting.

Written by Corrine Halstead, Owner at Level Two Chimney Oakland, serving Oakland since 2009.