How Sterling Chimney Cleaning Bridgeport Was Born in Bridgeport

It was a Tuesday morning in February 2010, and Gary Murphy was standing in the living room of a ranch house on Arctic Street in Bridgeport, watching a homeowner cry. The woman, maybe sixty years old, had just paid another company $890 for what they called a “complete chimney rebuild.” What they’d actually done was slap some cheap mortar on the crown, shove a shop-vac down the flue, and leave a mess of black soot across her white carpet. The chimney was still leaking. It still smelled like wet creosote every time it rained. And now she couldn’t afford to have it fixed properly.

Gary was working for a regional outfit at the time, sent out on what the office called a “rescue call”—meaning they’d underbid the original job and needed someone to make it look like they cared. He looked at that woman’s face, then at the botched work, and something hardened in him. That night, he called his wife and said, “I’m starting my own company. I’m going to do this right, or I’m not going to do it at all.” Three months later, Sterling Chimney Cleaning Bridgeport opened with one van, a set of rods Gary had bought used, and a handwritten promise on every invoice: We fix what others patch. We charge what it’s worth, not what we can get away with.

Gary Murphy’s Personal Connection to the Chimney Cleaning Trade

People ask how I got into chimney work, and they’re usually expecting some family trade story—grandfather with a flat cap and a wire brush. The truth is messier. I was twenty-four, living in a drafty apartment on Fairfield Avenue, and my landlord refused to fix a chimney that smoked back into the unit every time I lit a fire. One Saturday in November, I bought a flashlight and a cheap mirror, climbed up on the roof myself, and found a bird’s nest the size of a basketball wedged above the smoke shelf. I didn’t know what a smoke shelf was then. I learned by feel, by smell, by the sting of creosote in my eyes and the way the draft changed when I finally cleared that obstruction.

That first winter, I cleaned every chimney I could talk my way into—friends, neighbors, the guy who ran the bodega on Main Street. I’d come home smelling like wood ash and sulfur, hands cracked from the creosote, and I’d sit at my kitchen table reading NFPA codes until midnight. There was something about the work that got under my skin. Chimneys are invisible infrastructure. People forget they exist until something goes wrong, and when something goes wrong—carbon monoxide backing up, a flue fire cracking the liner—it goes wrong fast. I liked being the person who prevented that. I liked the moment on a roof in Bridgeport, wind coming off Long Island Sound, when I’d look down a flue and know exactly what was happening in that house below.

Fourteen years later, I still feel it. The days I don’t climb a ladder feel incomplete. If I weren’t doing this, I’d probably be fixing boats or restoring old houses—something with my hands, something where the quality of the work is obvious and immediate. What gets me out of bed is the call from someone who’s been told they need a $4,000 rebuild, and I get up there and find out they need a $400 crown seal and someone honest enough to tell them the difference.

Meet Gary Murphy — The Person Behind Every Job

I’m Gary Murphy, Owner and Lead Technician at Sterling Chimney Cleaning Bridgeport. I’m the person who answers the phone, climbs your roof, and signs off on every job we complete. I hold CSIA certification and stay current on Connecticut’s updated solid fuel burning device codes, but what separates me from a franchise tech in a branded van is simple: I’m not trying to hit a sales quota. I’m trying to sleep at night.

When I’m not on a roof, I’m usually in my workshop in Black Rock, restoring vintage hand tools or building furniture from reclaimed lumber I pull out of old Bridgeport houses. That same patience applies to your chimney. I don’t rush flue inspections. I don’t recommend work you don’t need. And I don’t send anyone else to do what I promised I’d do myself. Every customer in Bridgeport gets my direct cell number, and I answer it—because if something’s wrong with a job I signed off on, I’m the one who needs to know.

Our Promise to Bridgeport Homeowners

Honest pricing means we itemize every charge before we start, and we’ve never added a “surprise discovery” fee after the fact. In 2016, a homeowner on Capitol Avenue was quoted $2,200 for “extensive flue damage” by another company. We inspected with a video camera, found minor spalling, and repaired it with a HeatShield application for $340. She left us our first online review. That review is still pinned in our office.

Quality parts means we use DuraFlex stainless liners for relining jobs, not the aluminum knockoffs some crews install to save forty bucks. We’ve had to tear out three of those cheap liners in Stratford alone after they corroded through in under five years.

Standing behind every job means our workmanship guarantee isn’t a piece of paper—it’s Gary Murphy’s name. If we install a Gelco cap and it fails, we replace it. If an Olympia Chimney liner we spec’d doesn’t perform, we make it right. No forms to fill out, no corporate escalation. You call, we fix it.

Our Credentials

State-licensed chimney contractor in Connecticut
Insured & bonded for residential and commercial work
14+ years serving Bridgeport and Fairfield County homeowners
1,234 verified reviews averaging 4.7 out of 5 stars

These aren’t decorations—they’re protections for you. A state license means we’ve met Connecticut’s technical standards and can be held accountable by the Department of Consumer Protection. Insurance and bonding means if something goes wrong on your property, you’re not paying out of pocket or fighting your own homeowner’s policy. Fourteen years in Bridgeport means we’ve worked on the specific chimney types common here: the 1920s masonry stacks in the North End, the prefab units in postwar Trumbull splits, the oil-to-gas conversions that left so many Fairfield homeowners with orphaned flues. And 1,234 reviews averaging 4.7 stars means real neighbors have vetted us, publicly, over more than a decade.

Rooted in Bridgeport

We’ve cleaned chimneys on Seaside Village, in the historic districts near Barnum Museum, and out along the Post Road corridor toward Fairfield. We’ve sponsored the Black Rock Day parade and donated cleaning services to the veteran’s housing nonprofit on East Main. When the nor’easter of March 2018 dumped two feet of wet snow and collapsed three chimneys in the North End, we worked fourteen-hour days for a week because those were our neighbors, not customers. Bridgeport isn’t where we operate. It’s where we live, where Gary’s kids go to school, where we buy our coffee and get our tires changed. That changes how you treat people.

Written by Gary Murphy, Owner at Sterling Chimney Cleaning Bridgeport, serving Bridgeport since 2010.