How Hearthstone Chimney Co. Was Born in Flushing
Back in 2014, we were working out of another shop when a call came in from a Flushing homeowner on 35th Avenue. She’d been quoted $4,200 for a “complete chimney rebuild” by a company that wouldn’t even climb the ladder to show her the damage. We drove over that afternoon, ran a camera up the flue, and found a cracked crown and some spalling brick, nothing more. She paid a fraction of that quote, and the work held fine.
That night, we sat in our truck outside the Queens Botanical Garden and talked about how many times we’d seen it. The upsell. The scare tactic. The invoice that arrived higher than the estimate with no explanation. Flushing deserved better. Queens deserved better. The Hearthstone name already meant something in other markets - certified sweeps, camera inspections, plain English - and we knew we were the ones to bring it here. We opened this branch the following spring with one promise: no surprises on the bill, and nothing recommended without photo evidence you can see for yourself.
Russell Haines’s Personal Connection to the Chimney Cleaning Trade
We didn’t stumble into chimney work. We were drawn to it slowly, then all at once.
The first time we climbed a roof, it was to help a tradesman who’d trained us in general home repair. He was short-handed on a sweep in Bayside, autumn of 2012, and asked if we could hold a ladder steady. We ended up on the roof with a brush in hand, watching the soot fall, smelling the creosote, feeling the give of old mortar under our fingertips. The homeowner came out with coffee in a mug that said “World’s Best Nonna.” She talked about her husband who’d passed, how he’d always handled the fireplace, how she didn’t know who to trust now. We listened. We swept. We showed her the camera footage and explained what was urgent and what could wait until next season.
She cried a little. We pretended not to notice and focused on packing the tools.
That’s when we understood what this work actually is. It’s not brushes and rods. It’s people who’ve been in their homes twenty years and plan to be carried out of them. They’ve been burned once and remember it. They don’t want the cheapest bid; they want to never think about it again.
If we weren’t doing this, we’d probably be fixing old motorcycles or restoring furniture, something that rewards patience and punishes shortcuts. But this is what we chose. Twelve years later, we still feel the same way when the phone rings. Someone in Flushing or Astoria or Jackson Heights needs to trust the person they’re letting into their home. That’s the part that gets us out of bed.
Meet Russell Haines - The Person Behind Every Job
Russell Haines is the Owner and Founder of Hearthstone Chimney Co. here in Flushing. He’s been in the trade since 2012, certified through the Chimney Safety Institute of America, and trained in level-2 inspection protocols, masonry assessment, and the proper application of relining systems including DuraFlex and HeatShield.
What separates Russell from a franchise technician sent from a dispatch center is simple: he’s the one who answers when there’s a problem. He lives in Queens. He knows the local building stock - the pre-war brick in Elmhurst, the mid-century chimneys in Whitestone, the converted boilers in Astoria basements. He carries a camera on every job because he believes a homeowner should see what he sees before they spend a dollar.
On weekends, you’ll find him at his workbench restoring hand tools, the old ones made of wood and steel that were built to last a lifetime. That same patience applies to every flue he inspects. When you hire Hearthstone, Russell is the one standing behind the work. That’s not marketing. That’s how we built this branch.
Our Promise to Flushing Homeowners
Our values aren’t framed on a wall. They’re tested every day.
Krafted right. We use proper materials - Gelco caps, Olympia Chimney liners when relining is needed, mortar mixes matched to the original construction. A journeyman trains every apprentice. No shortcuts past the damper, no guesswork on clearances.
Every time. The four hundredth inspection gets the same care as the first. We’ve seen technicians get sloppy after years in the trade. We watch for it in ourselves constantly.
Your home first. We work in your house the way we’d work in our mother’s. Drop cloths, shoe covers, vacuuming the hearth before we leave. The small things that cost us nothing and mean everything to someone who’s lived in their home for decades.
Standing behind it. The Keystone Standard: 90 days, in writing, no arguing. If it’s not right, we come back. No paperwork to file, no manager to escalate, no runaround.
Our Credentials
- State-licensed chimney contractor
- Insured and bonded for residential work
- More than a decade of local experience in Queens and northern Brooklyn
- Strong local reputation built job by job, neighbor to neighbor
Here’s why each one matters when you’re letting someone work in your home. State licensing means we’ve met the training and examination requirements New York sets for this trade. Insurance and bonding protect you if something goes wrong on your property - a cracked tile, a damaged roof, an injury. Years of local experience mean we’ve seen the specific chimney types in this market: the unlined flues in College Point bungalows, the deteriorated parging in Throgs Neck crawl spaces, the improper gas conversions in East Harlem. We don’t learn your house on your dime. And reputation, real reputation, is what you earn when no one’s watching - showing up when we say, charging what we quoted, admitting when work can safely wait rather than inventing urgency.
Every pro working under our name is required to hold the license and insurance their state requires. The standards come from Hearthstone Chimney Co. The accountability is local.
Rooted in Flushing
We’ve swept chimneys on streets where the same family has lived since the Eisenhower administration. We’ve worked on houses near Kissena Park, near the old World’s Fair grounds, near the bustling corridors of Main Street where the signs change from Korean to Mandarin to Spanish in three blocks. This is our community. We hire locally when we can. We train apprentices into journeymen because the trade dies if no one passes it on. The hearthstone is the stone the whole home gathered around, and we take that seriously in a place where homes hold generations.
Written by Russell Haines, Owner at Hearthstone Chimney Co., serving Flushing and Queens since 2014.