How Kindling Chimney Orlando Was Born in Orlando
Kindling Chimney Sweep has been the chimney cleaning company of the Cedarwell family for a long time, and bringing that standard to Orlando was not a decision anyone made lightly. Orlando is a city where fireplaces sit dormant for nine months and then get lit the first week of December, often in homes that have not seen a brush in years. That’s a real risk, and it’s one we knew from the start had to be met with more than a leaf blower and a ladder.
What genuinely surprised us when we opened the Orlando location was how many homeowners had been told they needed full liner replacements based on nothing more than a glance up the flue. One homeowner in Winter Park had two separate companies tell her the chimney was unsafe and quoted her thousands for work she couldn’t see or verify. When our team got a camera up there, the flue was dirty but structurally fine. She paid for a sweep, not a rebuild. That moment set the tone for everything we do here. A safe fire starts with a clean chimney, and in Orlando, it starts with an honest look first.
Danny Cortes’s Personal Connection to the Chimney Cleaning Trade
Danny Cortes didn’t grow up dreaming about creosote. The work found him, the way it finds a lot of people in this trade: through the smell of a cold fireplace on a humid Florida morning. There’s a particular odor a chimney gives off after a long Orlando summer, when the humidity has been sitting in the masonry and the last fire was back in February. It’s earthy and faintly sour, and the first time Danny pulled a soot-covered brush out of a flue and watched a family’s fireplace finally draw clean air, something clicked.
The work is physical. It’s dusty in a way that gets into your clothes and stays there. But the satisfaction is immediate and visible. You see the before. You see the after. You watch the homeowner’s shoulders drop when they realize their chimney is sound and their kids can sit by a fire this winter without them worrying all season. Danny found that he cared about that reaction more than he expected to. Over years in the field, he learned that the best part of the job isn’t the cleaning itself. It’s the moment a homeowner realizes someone actually looked, actually explained, and didn’t try to sell them something they didn’t need.
What keeps him in this trade is the rhythm of it. Chimneys are simple structures with complicated problems, and every home in Orlando has its own story: the Maitland house with the rusted damper that still works fine, the Kissimmee rental where nobody remembers the last sweep, the Apopka fireplace that the previous owner “never used” but that’s packed with old nesting material anyway. The trade rewards patience and honesty. If Danny weren’t doing this, he’d still be working with his hands, still showing up at people’s homes, still trying to leave a place better than he found it. But the chimney trade holds his attention because it matters in a way people don’t realize until the first cold night of the year.
Meet Danny Cortes – The Person Behind Every Job
Danny Cortes is the Owner and Founder of Kindling Chimney Orlando. His background is in hands-on trades, and his training in chimney systems and fire safety comes from years of working with tools, cameras, and other people’s homes. He runs this location with the standards of the Kindling Chimney Sweep brand behind him: a written price before any work starts, and every job covered by The Cedarwell Care Promise.
What separates Danny from a technician checking boxes is how he reads a home. He notices the small things: a damper that squeaks in a way that suggests rust, a hearth that’s been painted over too many times, a family dog who’s nervous about strangers. He is the kind of person who keeps a pair of shoe covers in the truck not because a manual says so, but because he wouldn’t want soot tracked across his own living room floor. He treats every home in Orlando the way he’d want his own treated, and that commitment is personal.
Our Promise to Orlando Homeowners
Every job we do in Orlando follows the same care promise that anchors the entire Kindling Chimney Sweep brand. It’s called C.A.R.E., and it’s specific enough to hold us accountable.
- Clean up like it is our own home. Shoe covers and drop cloths inside the house, every time. The floors look the same when we leave as they did when we arrived.
- Ask before we move or touch anything. If a piece of furniture, a photo frame, or a stack of firewood is in the way, we ask. We don’t assume.
- Respect the family’s time and quiet hours. We arrive when we say we will, and we work with quiet tools where it matters. If a baby is napping, we adapt.
- Explain the price before the work. You get a written price before any tool comes off the truck. No surprises at the end.
These aren’t slogans. They’re the reason families with kids and pets can have us in the house without hovering. The Cedarwell Care Promise also includes a photo of the clean-up before we leave, so you can see what we did and how we left it.
Our Credentials
Kindling Chimney Orlando operates to the network standards of the Kindling Chimney Sweep brand. Every pro working under our name is required to hold the license and insurance their state requires. We carry insurance and bonding as a company, because anyone entering your home to work around fire and masonry should be covered.
- State-licensed: Our technicians meet the licensing requirements for chimney and home service work in Florida.
- Insured and bonded: Coverage protects your home and our team while we’re on the property.
- Local experience: We know Orlando chimneys, Orlando humidity, and the way both react to the first cold snap of the year.
- Local reputation: Homeowners across Orange County and the surrounding area trust us because we show up, look honestly, and explain clearly.
Why these matter: a chimney sweep is someone you let into your home, around your family, with tools and a ladder. Credentials mean the person has met a standard before they ever knock on your door. And the written estimate means you’ll never wonder what the work actually cost or whether you approved it.
Rooted in Orlando
We work in Orlando, Maitland, Deltona, Kissimmee, Apopka, Ocoee, Winter Garden, Winter Springs, Winter Park, Four Corners, DeBary, and Hunters Creek, and we drive these roads every week. This is a community of people who take pride in their homes, and we’re proud to be a local business that agreed to work to the Cedarwell Care Promise. Each Kindling location is independently owned and operated. Ours is run by Danny Cortes, and it answers to the families who live here.
Written by Danny Cortes, Owner at Kindling Chimney Orlando, serving the Orlando area with quality chimney cleaning and fire safety care.