Meet the Team - Hearthstone Chimney Co.

Meet the Brick Team Behind Hearthstone Chimney Co.

We’re the crew that shows up at your door in Brick, NJ when the chimney needs sweeping before burning season, when the flue liner’s cracked and you’re smelling smoke in the upstairs hallway, or when you just need someone to tell you straight whether that “urgent” repair another company quoted is actually urgent. What ties us together isn’t a handbook. It’s that none of us can stand walking away from a job we’d be embarrassed to have our own mothers inspect. Russell Haines started this in 1984, and he still hires for that standard.

Call (609) 657-3371

Our People

Russell Haines, Owner

I started Hearthstone Chimney Co. in 1984, back when Brick was half the size it is now and most chimneys around here were still unlined masonry from the 1960s. Forty-two years later, I’m still on job sites most weeks, usually with a camera in my hand because I don’t trust anyone else’s photos to show a homeowner what I need them to see. I hold a CSIA Certified Chimney Sweep credential and a New Jersey home improvement contractor registration, but the certification I actually use daily is the one between my ears that says: stop and look again. I’m the one who answers the phone at odd hours more often than my family likes, and my idea of a good day is a customer who argues with me because I told them their chimney is fine and they don’t need to spend money. That happens more than you’d think.

Mike D., Lead Technician

Mike’s been with us twelve years, which in this trade means he’s seen every way a Brick chimney can fail and most of the creative ways homeowners have tried to patch them before calling us. He’s CSIA certified and specializes in level-2 camera inspections, the kind where we run a camera up the flue and document everything like an engineer, then Mike sits down with you and explains it like a craftsman who actually wants you to understand. He lives in Point Pleasant, so he knows the local salt-air corrosion that hits cap and crown mortar differently here than inland. His truck is improbably clean for someone who crawls into fireboxes for a living, and he will absolutely notice if you have a dog before he rings the bell.

Carla R., Senior Installer

Carla handles our liner installations, cap and crown rebuilds, and the jobs where we have to dismantle part of a chimney and put it back together so it doesn’t leak for the next thirty years. She’s factory-trained on DuraFlex and HeatShield systems, which matters because a liner that doesn’t fit exactly is a liner that fails exactly. Before she joined us eight years ago, she spent six years in commercial HVAC sheet metal, so she’s unusually good at the custom fabrication work that comes up in older Brick homes where nothing is standard size. She has a running feud with seagulls, who seem to target her scaffolding specifically, and she once found a 1970s TV remote in a chimney flue that nobody, including the homeowner, could explain.

James T., Service Coordinator

James is the live voice you get when you call (609) 657-3371 at 10 PM on a Saturday because you smelled something odd from the fireplace. He’s not reading from a script. He’s been with us four years, knows the scheduling realities of Ocean County traffic in summer, and will tell you honestly whether your situation needs tomorrow morning or can wait until Tuesday. He coordinates our parts ordering from Gelco, Olympia Chimney, Famco, and Copperfield, so when Mike or Carla says they need something specific, it’s on the truck the next day instead of next week. James grew up in Lakewood, commutes from Toms River, and has an uncanny memory for which Brick neighborhoods have the narrow driveways that require our smaller rig.

Danny K., Apprentice

Danny’s in his second year with us, which means he’s past the stage of dropping tools down flues but not yet past the stage of asking questions that make the rest of us remember details we’d forgotten. He’s working toward his CSIA certification and currently specializes in being everywhere he’s needed, which means he’s learned to sweep a flue, mix crown mortar, and hold a ladder steady without complaint. He was born in Brick, went to Brick Memorial, and knows which streets flood in a hard rain, which matters more than you’d think when we’re scheduling around weather. Danny is aggressively polite, still says “yes sir” to customers half his age, and is the reason we now keep a spare phone charger in every truck.

One Standard, Every Job

The K.E.Y.S. code isn’t a poster on a wall. It’s how we decide who to hire, how to train, and when to stop a job and start over. Krafted right means we don’t use builder-grade materials when professional-grade DuraFlex, HeatShield, or Gelco products are what the job calls for. Every time means the 90-Day Done Right Promise applies whether you’re in Brick or Bay Head, whether it’s a $89 seasonal tune-up or a full liner rebuild. Your home first means we show you the camera photos before we quote the repair, and we tell you plainly when something can wait six months. Standing behind it means in writing, no arguing, if it’s not right, we come back.

We’ve been in Ocean County over 42 years. We plan to be here thirty more. That changes how you treat people when you know you’ll see them at the hardware store next spring.

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