Meet the Team - Hearthstone Chimney Co.

Meet the Boston Team Behind Hearthstone Chimney Co.

Our Boston crew is the same faces you’ll see year after year. Most of us live within twenty minutes of the neighborhoods we work, which means we’re sweeping chimneys in Roslindale on Tuesday and cap replacements in Somerville on Thursday. What ties this group together isn’t a handbook. It’s the K.E.Y.S. code Russell put down in writing back when he was still climbing ladders himself: Krafted right, Every time, Your home first, Standing behind it. Nobody here cuts a corner because nobody here works alone. If a job’s going out under our name, it meets the standard we set in 1984.

Call (857) 597-5950

Our People

Russell Haines, Owner

Russell started Hearthstone Chimney Co. in 1984, working out of a used van with a brush set he’d bought off a retiring sweep in Quincy. Forty-two years later, he’s still the one who answers the phone at odd hours when the live line rolls over, still the one who drives out to look at a job personally if the photos don’t tell the whole story. He holds a CSIA Certified Chimney Sweep credential and a Massachusetts Construction Supervisor License, though he’ll tell you the certification that mattered most was the first winter he spent learning how freeze-thaw cycles in Boston’s older masonry will find every weak spot you missed. Russell lives in Jamaica Plain with his wife and a dog that has learned to sleep through the sound of a van backing up. He keeps a handwritten log of every liner installation he’s overseen since 1987, and yes, he can still tell you the address of job number forty-three without looking it up.

Marcus T., Lead Technician

Marcus has been with Hearthstone for eleven years, coming over from a general contracting crew where he learned he preferred working on one thing until it was done right rather than juggling six jobs poorly. He’s our lead technician on Level-2 camera inspections, which means he’s the one feeding the Chim-Scan up flues in Back Bay brownstones and Dorchester triple-deckers alike, then sitting with homeowners to explain what the images actually show versus what a scare-quote “needs immediate replacement.” Marcus is factory-trained on DuraFlex liner systems and HeatShield cerfractory resurfacing, and he’s particular about crown builds, the way some people are particular about sourdough. Off hours, he coaches a youth basketball team in Mattapan and has a running bet with Russell about whether the Celtics will outlast his knees.

Elena R., Senior Installer

Elena joined us seven years ago after completing her apprenticeship with a chimney company in Worcester, and she quickly became the person we send when a job requires custom fabrication or when a historic Cambridge chimney needs a cap that matches existing copperwork. She’s certified in Gelco and Olympia Chimney systems, and she’s the only member of the crew who genuinely enjoys working on steep-pitch roofs in January, something the rest of us do not pretend to understand. Elena grew up in a family of pipefitters in East Boston, so she talks about flue sizing and draft dynamics the way other people discuss traffic routes, which is to say, with opinions backed by experience you can’t argue with. She keeps a collection of photographs documenting the worst DIY chimney repairs she’s encountered, strictly for educational purposes, she claims.

James K., Service Coordinator

James is the voice you’ll hear when you call (857) 597-5950 at 10 PM on a Saturday because you smelled something odd from the fireplace. He’s been with Hearthstone for four years, and before that he spent eight years dispatching for a Boston HVAC company, so he knows the difference between a caller who needs reassurance and one who needs a truck rolling in twenty minutes. James schedules every appointment, confirms every estimate, and follows up after every job to make sure the invoice matched the number we quoted upfront. He lives in Allston, knows every parking regulation in the city by heart, and maintains a private ranking of which coffee shops in each neighborhood have bathrooms his technicians can actually use. He also handles the senior and veteran discount applications, the $89 seasonal tune-up bookings, and the free second-opinion requests, and he does not lose paperwork.

Devon P., Apprentice

Devon started with us in spring of 2023, fresh out of a vocational program in Brockton where he’d trained in masonry. He’s working through his CSIA certification while rotating through every phase of the work: sweeping, inspection assistance, liner prep, cap installation, and the slow education of learning what a properly parged smoke chamber should look like versus one that’s been neglected for thirty years. Devon asks more questions than the rest of the crew combined, which is exactly why we hired him. He grew up in a house with a wood stove in Randolph, so he understood draft before he understood algebra. Currently he’s obsessed with learning copper flashing from Elena, and he brings his own lunch every day in a cooler that Russell describes as “aggressively organized.”

One Standard, Every Job

The Boston team works as part of the same network Russell built, but the standard doesn’t travel by memo. It travels because the same people show up, use the same materials from the same suppliers, DuraFlex and HeatShield and Gelco and Olympia Chimney and Famco and Copperfield, and sign off on the same 90-Day Done Right Promise that goes in writing on every job. No arguing. If it’s not right, we come back. Most of our work finishes in a single visit because we’ve done enough of these to know what the job actually requires before we unload the truck. The estimate you get is the invoice you pay. The photos from the camera inspection are yours to keep. The verdict is in plain English, not a sales pitch. That’s the Keystone Standard, and it’s the same whether Russell is on the ladder or whether Marcus or Elena is running the job. We’ve been in Boston for over forty-two years. We plan to be here for thirty more. You act accordingly when you know your name is going to be attached to a chimney for that long.

Written by Russell Haines, Owner at Hearthstone Chimney Co., serving Boston since 1984.