Meet the Team - Hearthstone Chimney Co.

Meet the Newton Team Behind Hearthstone Chimney Co.

We’re the crew that shows up at your door in Newton with boot covers, a camera, and no mystery about what we’re doing or what it’ll cost. Most of us live within twenty minutes of the jobs we run, which means we know the flue shapes in Newton Centre versus the draft quirks in Nonantum. What ties us together isn’t a handbook. It’s the K.E.Y.S. code Russell put in place back when this was a one-van operation, and it’s still how we decide who’s right for this team.

Call (857) 754-5607

Our People

Russell Haines, Owner

I started Hearthstone in 1984 with a borrowed brush and a secondhand van that smelled like mothballs. Forty-two years later, I’m still the one who answers the phone some nights when the line rolls over, still the one who pulls every permit for liner jobs in Newton because I’ve sat across from enough inspectors to know what they actually want to see. NFPA-certified since the nineties. The dry observation I’ll offer: pulled a full squirrel’s nest out of a flue on Homer Street in March, still warm. The homeowner thought their damper was broken. My rule for the crew is simple - explain it like you’re talking to your neighbor, document it like you’re talking to a judge.

Marcus T., Lead Technician

Marcus runs the Level-2 inspections and he’s the reason our camera reports come back with photos homeowners can actually read. CSIA-certified, twelve years in the trade, and he came to us from a Boston outfit where he got tired of being told to sell repairs the customer didn’t need. His specialty is masonry evaluation - he’ll tell you when a crown crack is cosmetic and when it’s letting water into your smoke chamber, and he’ll show you the difference on the screen before you spend a dollar. Off the clock, he restores vintage motorcycles in a garage in Watertown. That patience with seized bolts translates directly to how he works a stubborn flue tile.

Elena R., Senior Installer

Elena handles our liner and rebuild work, the jobs where you’re cutting into walls or dropping stainless down three stories. She’s factory-trained on DuraFlex and HeatShield systems, and she’s the one who convinced us to standardize on Gelco caps for Newton’s tree-heavy lots - too many maple helicopters clogging the mesh on cheaper units. Seven years with us, zero call-backs on her installs. Her human detail: she grew up in a house with a wood stove in Newton Highlands, so she understood draft behavior before she understood paychecks. She’ll notice if your firewood pile is too close to the house before she even opens her toolbox.

James K., Service Coordinator

James is the live voice when you call (857) 754-5607 at 10 PM on a Saturday because you smelled something odd after the first fire of the season. He’s been with us four years, knows the dispatch map cold, and he’s the one who makes sure Marcus or Elena isn’t driving from Waban to Oak Hill when someone else is already five minutes away. No script, no upsell - just questions that get to whether you need a next-day sweep or whether we should talk you through shutting down the unit safely tonight. He keeps a whiteboard behind his monitor with every technician’s kid’s name and every ongoing permit number. Says it saves him from calling the wrong person with an update.

Devon P., Apprentice

Devon’s in his second year, rotating through every discipline before he picks a specialty. He’s OSHA-10 certified, passed his CSIA written, and he’s the one who climbs the steep pitches on Newton’s older colonials while Marcus supervises from the ladder base. What we like: he asks the questions most people are too proud to ask. Last month he stopped a job on Walnut Street because he’d never seen a thimble installation that old and wanted Russell’s eyes on it before we committed to a repair scope. Turns out the previous homeowner had done their own “modification” in the eighties. Devon’s detail: he’s a volunteer firefighter in Needham, so he actually knows what a chimney fire looks like from the roof side, not just the hearth side.

One Standard, Every Job

The K.E.Y.S. code lives in our trucks, laminated and coffee-stained. Krafted right, Every time, Your home first, Standing behind it. It’s not a poster. It’s how we settle disagreements about whether a crown repair can wait or whether we’re being too conservative with a liner recommendation. The 90-Day Done Right Promise applies to every technician equally - no arguing, no paperwork chase, we come back. Most jobs finish in a single visit because we’ve seen the variables before. The pricing you get upfront is the pricing on the invoice because nobody on this team wants to explain a surprise charge to someone they might run into at the Newton Farmers Market. Russell put it in place in 1984 and it’s still the only way we work.

Written by Russell Haines, Owner at Hearthstone Chimney Co., serving Newton and local communities since 1984.