Meet the Team - Top Hat Chimney

Meet the Sterling Team Behind Top Hat Chimney

We’ve been working on Sterling chimneys since before the Dulles Town Center expansion started drawing new families to the area. The crew you’ll see at your door isn’t a rotating cast of subcontractors. It’s the same handful of people, most of whom live within fifteen minutes of the shop. What unites them isn’t a mission statement or a training binder. It’s simpler than that. Wendell has been turning down work we can’t do right since 1999, and the people who stick around here tend to share that particular stubbornness. You’ll meet the regulars below.

Our People

Danny R. – Lead Technician

Danny has been with Top Hat for eleven years, which means he has swept or repaired somewhere north of six thousand chimneys in Loudoun and Fairfax counties. He holds a CSIA certification and handles most of our reline work, which he prefers over everything else because it’s exacting. He grew up in Herndon, bought a house in Sterling Park in 2014, and can tell you which developments were built with cheap prefab boxes and which ones got real masonry. On weekends he runs a smoker in the backyard and will absolutely ask what wood you burn. His flue-cam reads are the ones Wendell trusts most.

Carmen S. – Service Coordinator

Carmen has been answering our phones for nine years, though “answering phones” undersells it. She knows the service area block by block, she knows how long a job actually takes, and she gives you a real arrival window instead of a four-hour shrug. Before joining Top Hat she ran scheduling for a plumbing outfit in Ashburn, which is where she learned that the fastest way to lose trust is to make a promise to a homeowner and break it. She lives in Countryside with two dogs and a wood stove that she has cleaned more often than anyone should. If you call us at noon or midnight, that’s Carmen.

Mike T. – Senior Installer

Mike handles most of our cap, crown, and chase cover work, plus the heavier rebuild jobs. He has been installing liners and caps with us since 2011 and carries manufacturer certifications for both DuraFlex and Olympia Chimney systems. Mike is the person you want on a steep roofline too, because he doesn’t hurry and he doesn’t make excuses. He served in the Navy before getting into this trade, which is where he picked up his habit of double-checking every fitting before he comes down off a roof. He lives in Leesburg and has a standing bet with Danny about whose barbecue is better. Nobody has won.

Oscar V. – Apprentice Technician

Oscar is the newest face on the truck, three years into the trade and already trusted to handle first-degree creosote brush jobs solo. He works under Danny on liners and learning the camera gear, and he’s the one who will triple-bag the drop cloths before they leave the truck. Before chimneys, Oscar worked as an electrician’s assistant in Sterling, so he came to us with a healthy respect for what a bad installation looks like. He’s Loudoun born and raised, and he is the reason your service call might include a very polite young man asking to check the basement vents before he touches the flue.

Wendell Pike – Owner

Wendell founded Top Hat Chimney in 1999 with one truck and a simple rule: if the work isn’t right, it gets made right. No fine print, no argument. He’s been on thousands of roofs since then, though these days he splits his time between the big rebuild estimates and making sure the crew shows up with what the job actually needs. He still answers the phone plenty, because that’s the job. Wendell puts the 90-Day Done Right Promise on every job we finish, in writing. Ask anyone on your street. The number you hear on the phone is the same number on the invoice, and Wendell is the reason that policy has survived twenty-nine years of inflation and competitors cutting corners. He lives in Sterling and runs into customers at the grocery store on Saturdays, which is exactly the way he wants it.

One Standard, Every Job

Every one of us follows the same routine on a Sterling job, whether it’s a simple sweep or a full liner replacement. The price is settled before a single tool comes off the truck. The flue camera goes in, and you see the footage with your own eyes before we recommend anything. And when the job’s done, the 90-Day Done Right Promise means one call brings us back at no charge. No escalation hotline, no new crew. The same people you hired, including Wendell if that’s what it takes. A four-person team can’t hide behind corporate layers, and we don’t want to. That’s the whole model. It worked in 1999, and it works now.

Written by Wendell Pike, Owner at Top Hat Chimney, serving Sterling since 1999.