How Hearthstone Chimney Co. Was Born in Brick
It was late fall in Brick, 2014, and we’d just finished watching another homeowner get talked into a full liner replacement they didn’t need. The company had sent a kid with a flashlight and a clipboard, no camera, no photos, just a handwritten note saying “unsafe to use” and a quote that made the room go quiet. The homeowner was a retired teacher on a fixed income. Their chimney had some glazed creosote, yes, but nothing a proper sweep and a few pointed repairs couldn’t handle. They were about to spend eight thousand dollars on fear.
We’d been working for another outfit then, and we’d seen the playbook enough times. Scare first, sell fast, move on. That evening we drove past the Mantoloking Bridge at sunset, the salt air coming through the window, and made a decision. Brick deserved a chimney company that treated the hearth like what it is - the stone the whole home gathered around. Not a sales opportunity. Not a scare tactic. Just honest work, documented like an engineer, explained like a neighbor.
We opened our doors that winter with one promise: no one in Brick would ever pay for a repair they couldn’t see with their own eyes. Every inspection gets a camera. Every recommendation gets a photo. Every bill gets explained before a tool touches brick. That teacher called us three years later for their regular sweep. They still had their original liner.
Russell Haines’s Personal Connection to the Chimney Cleaning Trade
Russell Haines didn’t stumble into chimney work. He was pulled into it by the peculiar satisfaction of solving a problem that’s hiding in plain sight - inside a dark tube most people ignore until it scares them.
The first time he climbed a roof in Point Pleasant, it was to help a tradesman who’d trained him in general home repair. The job was a stuck damper on a 1960s ranch. Russell remembers the grit under his knees, the smell of old soot and salt air mixing together, the way the afternoon light came through the chimney top in a single shaft. He remembers the homeowner watching from the driveway, arms crossed, skeptical until the damper moved freely and the draw tested clean. Something shifted then. This was work you could feel in your shoulders and see in someone’s face when they trusted their fireplace again.
That was over a decade ago. Since then, Russell has worked chimneys through every season Brick throws at us - the nor’easter freezes that crack crowns, the humid summers that turn creosote acidic, the spring winds that lodge debris in caps along the Barnegat Bay. He’s been on roofs in Ramtown when the wind was steady at twenty knots. He’s crawled flues in Lakewood colonials built before World War II, where the mortar is lime and the bricks are handmade. He’s sat with homeowners in Howell who hadn’t used their fireplace in years because the last company couldn’t explain what was wrong.
What gets Russell out of bed is the same thing that kept him on that first roof: the moment when a homeowner understands their own house better than they did before he arrived. If he weren’t doing this, he’d probably be building furniture in a garage somewhere, working with his hands, solving physical problems one at a time. The work chose him because it fits who he is - patient, methodical, more interested in doing it right than doing it fast.
He still climbs when the job calls for it. Still carries the camera himself on inspections that need a second look. Still takes the phone call when a past customer in Wall or Tinton Falls has a question in October, burning season coming on, a little nervous about that smell from last winter. The trade gave him a way to be useful in a world that doesn’t always reward that. He intends to keep being useful.
Meet Russell Haines - The Person Behind Every Job
Russell Haines is Owner & Founder of Hearthstone Chimney Co. in Brick. He’s a certified chimney sweep with level-2 inspection training and years of hands-on experience in masonry repair, flue relining, and fireplace restoration across Ocean and Monmouth counties. He knows the difference between a HeatShield application and a full liner replacement, and he’ll tell you straight which one your chimney actually needs.
What separates Russell from a franchise technician sent from a dispatch center is simple: he’s the one who answers for the work. He trains every journeyman under our name personally. He reviews every photo report before it goes to a customer. He lives in this community, raises his family here, and plans to be sweeping chimneys in Brick when his own hair is fully gray.
On weekends you’ll find him on the water or working with his hands on some project that doesn’t need to exist - a boat restoration, a garden wall, something built for its own sake. That same impulse drives how he runs this company. We don’t sell what you don’t need. We don’t leave until it’s done right. And we stand behind it.
Here’s Russell’s commitment to you, direct: when we work in your home, we work the way we’d work in our mother’s. That’s not a slogan. That’s the standard he holds himself to on every single job.
Our Promise to Brick Homeowners
Our values aren’t framed on a wall. We live by them, and we named them so we’d remember: K.E.Y.S.
Krafted right. We use proper materials - Gelco caps when the application calls for them, Olympia Chimney liners when a full relining is genuinely needed, Famco components when we’re chasing down a draft issue. No shortcuts, no hardware-store substitutions, no “good enough.” A job done with the wrong material fails twice as fast.
Every time. The 400th sweep of the season gets the same brush pressure, the same camera attention, the same photo documentation as the first. Russell checks this personally. Complacency is how chimneys get missed.
Your home first. Drop cloths on every floor we cross. Boot covers at the door. We work clean because you live here, and because we’ll be back next year.
Standing behind it. The Keystone Standard, applied to chimneys: 90 days, in writing, no arguing. If it’s not right, we come back. No paperwork battle, no phone tree, no hassle.
Honest pricing means no surprises on the bill. Quality parts mean no callbacks we have to eat. Standing behind every job means you never have to wonder if we’ll answer when you call.
Our Credentials
Every pro working under our name is required to hold the license and insurance their state requires. Here’s what that means for your home:
- State-licensed. New Jersey requires chimney sweeps to meet specific standards for trade knowledge and consumer protection. We don’t cut corners on compliance.
- Insured & bonded. Accidents in homes are rare but real. This protects your property and your family if something goes wrong.
- Years of local experience. We’ve worked Brick chimneys through freeze-thaw cycles, coastal humidity, and every variation of New Jersey construction from 1920s bungalows to new builds.
- Strong local reputation. Our customers are your neighbors. They see us at the hardware store, at the gas station on Route 70, at the coffee shop in Manasquan. We can’t afford to disappoint them, and we don’t.
These credentials matter because chimney work happens inside your home, on your roof, around your family. A license means someone checked that we know what we’re doing. Insurance means you’re not left holding the bag. Local experience means we understand why a Brick chimney fails differently than one in Pennsylvania or Maine. And a local reputation means we have to look you in the eye next year.
Rooted in Brick
We’re not passing through. Russell raised his family here. Our trucks take Route 88 past the Windward Beach Park, head down Hooper Avenue past the shops that have been there since before the mall went in. We’ve swept chimneys in the neighborhoods off Drum Point Road, in the older homes near the Metedeconk River, in the developments that went up after the storm. We know which blocks flood first and which chimneys take the brunt of the bay wind.
We hire local. We train apprentices into journeymen. We answer the phone with a live coordinator who connects you with our local team, Monday through Sunday, 7:30 AM to 7:30 PM. A company that plans to be in Brick in thirty years acts like it.
Written by Russell Haines, Owner at Hearthstone Chimney Co., serving Brick since 2014.