What the camera scan shows
The camera is the difference between a level 1 and a level 2, and it is the part most homeowners have never seen. A flue is a stack of clay tiles with mortar joints between them, and the two faults that matter are a cracked tile and an open joint. Neither is visible from the firebox and neither is visible from the top. Both are a route for heat and combustion gas into the space between the flue and the brick, which is the space the framing of the house is built against. A scan either finds them or it does not, and the still frames go into the report either way.
Buying or selling a house in New Jersey
A property transfer is the event that books a level 2, and a buyer's attorney or a realtor will usually ask for one before closing. A buyer wants to know whether the fireplace they are paying for can be lit, and a seller wants that question answered before it becomes a negotiating point at the closing table. A general home inspection is not a chimney inspection: it looks at what is visible and it does not put a camera down the flue, which is exactly where the expensive findings live.
The New Jersey chimney verification form
New Jersey has its own document for this. The Uniform Construction Code chimney verification form, UCC-F370, is filed with the permit when a fuel fired appliance is replaced or converted, for example oil to gas. It records the liner manufacturer, model, listing, material and size and the chimney height, and it is signed by the verifying individual or company, not by the homeowner. A town asks for it with the permit application or before the final inspection. Knowing the form by name before a building department asks for it saves a round of confusion.
What the written report contains
The report names the level it was carried out to, the date, what was reached and what was not, and every finding with its location. A finding is written as the condition and its consequence rather than as a recommendation on its own, so a homeowner can see why a repair is being proposed and can take the same report to another company. Camera stills and photographs sit with the findings. Where nothing was found, the report says that too, which is what an annual inspection on a sound chimney produces.
What an inspection cannot tell you
An inspection reports the chimney on the day it was inspected and within the access the level allows. A hairline crack behind sound plaster, a flue defect above the reach of the camera, or a fault inside a chase that has been closed up will not appear in a level 1 or a level 2 report, and when that is suspected the answer is a level 3, which means opening something. An inspection is also not a warranty on a masonry structure that is a hundred years old and outdoors.
Gas appliances are inspected too
A gas fireplace, a gas furnace and a gas water heater all vent through something, and the venting is inside the same scope. The failure mode is different from a wood burning chimney: instead of creosote it is an oversized flue for the appliance now attached to it, condensation, and deterioration of the liner from flue gas. That is why an oil to gas conversion is one of the named triggers for a level 2, and it is the point at which relining usually enters the conversation.
The annual inspection and the chimney that is never lit
The standard does not have an exemption for a fireplace nobody uses. CSIA states that the annual expectation applies even where the chimney is little used, because animals may build nests in the flue and other deterioration can make the chimney unsafe. A nest is a blockage, a blockage is a carbon monoxide path if anything else vents into that stack, and a chimney that has been ignored for a decade is the one most likely to have something living in it.
Chimney certification, and how to check any company's claim
No chimney certification is published for this business. The inspection levels come from NFPA 211 as the Chimney Safety Institute of America and other named sources restate it, and they are the scope any competent inspection is measured against, whoever performs it. CSIA publishes a public directory of certified professionals, and any company's certification claim can be checked there before you book anything, including this one.