Q&A: Do you need a camera to perform a Level II chimney inspection?

While I was teaching about chimney inspections to a group of home inspectors in Maryland last week, one of the inspectors in the audience asked me a technical question. Do you need a video camera to perform a Level II chimney inspection? The short answer is yes. To be more technically accurate, you must have “image scanning equipment.” And now the long answer.

To fully explain and answer this question, let’s define the different types of chimney inspections. This information comes from National Fire Protection Agency (NFPA) 211, the Standard for Chimneys, Fireplaces, Vents, and Solid Fuel-Burning Appliances. This document is a nationally accepted standard for constructing and inspecting fireplaces, chimneys, etc.

Chimney Inspection Levels

Chapter 15 of the latest edition of NFPA 211, titled Inspection of Existing Chimneys, gives specific guidance on the professional inspection of a chimney. It defines the scope, degree of access, circumstances, and indications of an inspection. Anyone who conducts a professional chimney inspection should adhere to these standards. There are three different types of inspections, and I’ll give a very simplified summary of these three below:

Level I: A visual inspection of the “readily accessible portions of the chimney and accessible portions of the connected appliance and chimney connection.” This is the type of inspection you should expect from your home inspector. This inspection is recommended annually, and with routine cleaning.

Level II: This inspection includes everything in a Level I inspection, along with all accessible exterior and interior components in attics, crawl spaces, and basements. This level of inspection is recommended any time you have a sale or transfer of a property, among other events. For this reason, we recommend Level II inspections as an addition to every home inspection. This exceeds home inspection standards of practice, and I don’t know of any home inspectors who include this in a standard home inspection.

Level III: This includes everything in a Level II inspection and involves taking stuff apart to access concealed areas. This type of inspection is reserved for incidents that have damaged a chimney or building or when a hazard is suspected from a Level I or Level II inspection and can’t be confirmed without destructive measures. These inspections are not common.

How to conduct a Level II inspection

Section 15.4.2.3 of NFPA 211 (2024) says this about a Level II inspection (I added the bold):

The inspection shall include examination of accessible areas of all chimney flues and the internal surfaces of all flue liners incorporated within the chimney with image scanning equipment or more advanced technological viewing systems used as necessary to observe those areas.

So first, what is meant by “image scanning equipment”? When we began conducting Level II chimney inspections in-house here at Structure Tech, we used a very expensive, specialized camera built just for chimney inspections. It was a good system, but the image quality was subpar. To get better images, we moved on to using a GoPro camera attached to specialized poles, and today we use the Ferret Sweeps camera and a centering device.

All three of these chimney inspection solutions use image-scanning equipment, which is basically a camera on a stick.

So what does a “more advanced technological viewing system” mean? Here’s a quote from the NFPA 211 code change rationale, which comes from the committee that updated the code in 2024 (I added the bold):

The purpose of this recommended change is to ensure the internal flue is inspected by image scanning or other means equal or better than image scanning. When the standard was originally drafted the “or other means” was put there to allow future innovation. However, the words “other means” have sometimes been interpreted to be a flashlight or mirror and this was never the intent of the original statement.

Conclusion

There’s no such thing as a Level II chimney inspection without a camera.

Special thanks to Master Chimney Sweep Steven Trumble of Chimney Doctors, who helped me answer this question quickly and provided a technical review of this blog post for accuracy. He reached out to Jim Brewer on the NFPA 211 committee that came up with these standards. Mr. Brewer was kind enough to make a video explaining exactly what all this means, and I included snippets of his video at the end of my video above.