Five minutes of QuickBooks read-only and a few quick questions surfaces what a buyer would pay up for — and discount — in your chimney & fireplace business: how much is recurring annual inspection/cleaning versus one-time, the higher-margin repair/reline mix, and how concentrated revenue is in the fall/winter peak. Preview is free; $499 for the full memo.
Enter two numbers for an instant Chimney Sweep ballpark. No signup — the real number comes from your books.
We answer each one from your books first — so you fix the story before a diligence team writes the number.
Most chimney shops do 60–70% of their revenue between September and January. A buyer underwrites the seasonal swing and the off-season trough, and prices the cash-flow lumpiness — especially if there's no off-season repair or dryer-vent work to smooth it.
If you run the service calls, sell the repairs, and are the senior certified tech, a buyer sees key-man risk, not a transferable business. A documented service/operations manager who dispatches and runs the crews without you is the strongest signal the business survives your exit.
One-time sweeps don't repeat on their own. Without an annual cleaning/inspection plan base that auto-reminds and re-books, a buyer treats the revenue as one you have to re-win each year, and prices it below a shop with a recurring inspection book and repair upsell.
Repair and relining (50–65% gross margin) is where the money is, but it requires CSIA-certified expertise and safe diagnostics. If only you can scope and sell the reline, a buyer prices the risk the high-margin line shrinks when you step back.
Each lever is sized for a typical $500k–$1.5m revenue chimney & fireplace company, sweep + repair mix — about $150K EBITDA. Same number whether we frame it as “what a buyer discounts” or “what you keep by fixing it.”
Enroll customers in annual cleaning/inspection plans that auto-remind and re-book, and use each inspection to scope higher-margin repair and relining. A recurring inspection base plus a strong repair attach is the clearest path to a higher multiple — and it smooths the season.
adds about 0.3–0.6× to your multiple · usually takes 12–18 months
Promote a service/operations manager with authority over dispatch and the repair pipeline, and build CSIA-certified depth so more than one tech can scope a reline. A chimney business that runs without the owner removes the dominant discount buyers apply.
adds about 0.4–0.7× to your multiple · usually takes 12–24 months
Clean accrual books with a documented add-back trail and a clear recurring-vs-one-time and cleaning-vs-repair split let a buyer trust the earnings and the seasonality — which protects the price from a mid-diligence re-trade.
adds about 0.1–0.3× to your multiple · usually takes 3–6 months
Typical impact ranges blended from lower-middle-market transaction data, sub-$50M M&A databases, and observed consolidator pricing in the $300K–$3M EBITDA band. Directional, not a guarantee — your memo computes your actual numbers from your books.
The metrics buyers grade chimney & fireplace companies on. The diagnostic fills the “your business” column from your actual QuickBooks data.
| Metric | Chimney Sweep benchmark | Your business | What it means |
|---|---|---|---|
| Recurring / contracted revenue | ~30% of revenue | Your data | Higher is better — the top multiple lever |
| Gross margin | ~45% | Your data | Pricing and job-costing discipline |
| EBITDA margin | ~18% | Your data | What flows to the bottom line |
| Healthy customer-concentration ceiling | top customer under 15% | Your data | Above it, buyers price the risk |
| Typical industry growth | ~4% / yr | Your data | Beating it can add to your multiple |
| Typical sale multiple | 2.5–4.5× EBITDA | Your data | Where the bidding starts; the levers above move you up |
Benchmarks are blended industry composites, service businesses $1M–$10M revenue, 2026-Q1 — directional, not a precise bar. Your memo measures you against your own books. Connect QuickBooks to fill in your numbers →
The diagnostic arrives as formats you can actually use, plus a private, scoped link to share a curated package with a specific buyer — you decide, card by card, what they see.
A branded slide deck, ready to present — for the buyer meeting, the lender, or the board.
A written diagnostic that holds up with buyers, yours to edit — plain-English summary, how we rebuilt your real earnings, every add-back listed.
Live formulas, not a dead printout — the path from raw profit to your real number, plus the cash-tied-up scenarios a buyer can stress-test.
Chimney service is a fragmented, mostly owner-operated, seasonal trade — but PE consolidation is just beginning, with Endura Services (formed by Argosy Private Equity) launching as a pure-play chimney/hearth roll-up, alongside franchises like Midtown Chimney Sweeps. Most buyers are individuals and search funds using SBA financing for local shops. The ones who pay up want a recurring annual-inspection base, a higher-margin repair/reline mix, CSIA-certified depth, manager-run dispatch, and clean books. The memo maps which would actually look at a company your size and how each tends to structure the deal.
Read-only, through Intuit. We never write to your books. About 5 minutes.
Just what the books can’t show — agreements, key accounts, who runs the crews.
Buyer-readiness score, normalized EBITDA, value range and top flags — instantly.
The full engine, all three deliverables, the dashboard and the buyer deal room.
Start with the free preview. Pay once — $499 — only when you want the full memo. No subscription, no per-seat pricing.
Most Chimney Sweep businesses in the $1M–$10M revenue range trade at roughly 2.5× to 4.5× normalized EBITDA, with a typical deal near 3.3×. Smaller, owner-dependent shops sit at the low end; larger, manager-run businesses with recurring revenue reach the top. Your actual number depends on your books — that's what the diagnostic computes, blending recent lower-middle-market closings, main-street marketplace sales, and academic M&A survey data.
A chimney valuation begins where a buyer's QoE team begins: your reported earnings as the starting line. From there, the normalizing adjustments — owner add-backs, family wages, personal vehicles, one-time items — each tied to a specific QuickBooks transaction, producing your normalized EBITDA. Against that we apply a service-trade multiple grounded in recent transactions (it runs roughly a turn below comparable HVAC). The factors that move it up or down: the recurring annual-inspection base vs. one-time cleaning, the higher-margin repair/reline mix, fall/winter seasonality, CSIA-certified depth, and whether service runs without you. Every figure traces back to your books — never a revenue rule-of-thumb.
A recurring annual cleaning/inspection plan base, a strong higher-margin repair/reline attach, CSIA-certified technician depth, manager-run dispatch, off-season work (dryer vents) that smooths the season, and clean books. The diagnostic scores where you sit on each and shows what moving up would be worth.
Sixty seconds. Four numbers. No signup, no email. Just a real answer.