How Hearthstone Chimney Co. Was Born in Chelmsford
We opened this branch in 2014, but the decision came a year earlier, on a wet Tuesday in March. A homeowner in Chelmsford called us, desperate. Three companies had been to her house, each one recommending something different. One said she needed a full liner replacement. Another said her damper was shot. The third just cleaned what he could reach and left a bill on the mantel. She was out money and still couldn’t light a fire without smoke pouring into her living room.
We found a cracked flue tile, twelve inches up. A thirty-dollar part, two hours of careful work, and she had a safe hearth again. She cried. Not from relief, from anger at what she’d been put through. That night we wrote down what became our founding promise for Chelmsford: no recommendation without seeing it yourself, no bill you didn’t agree to first, no leaving until it’s right. Twelve years later, that promise hasn’t changed.
Russell Haines’s Personal Connection to the Chimney Cleaning Trade
Russell Haines came to this work sideways. He was managing commercial properties in Lowell, spending his days with spreadsheets and contractors who didn’t show. The chimneys were always the problem. He’d stand in these old mill buildings, looking up at flues that hadn’t been touched in decades, and something about the work pulled at him. The smell of old soot and cold brick. The way a flue opened up when you finally got the right brush on it. The sound of a draft pulling clean for the first time in years.
He started apprenticing weekends, driving to jobs before dawn, learning to read a chimney the way you read a person’s face. The tradesman who trained him was old-school, patient, exacting. Russell spent his first month just carrying tools and watching. His first solo job was a simple sweep in Westford, and he remembers the particular weight of the rods, the way his shoulders ached, the satisfaction of the ash pile at the bottom coming out clean and gray.
What keeps him in it isn’t the fire prevention, though that matters. It’s the houses. These New England homes with their stories layered in brick and mortar. He’s stood in attics in Carlisle where the original 1840s chimney still draws. He’s rebuilt crowns in Groton where the family gathers every Christmas Eve. The work means something because the hearth means something. If he weren’t doing this, he’d probably be restoring old houses, some other way of keeping the past solid. But this found him, and he stayed.
Meet Russell Haines - The Person Behind Every Job
Russell Haines, Owner and Founder of Hearthstone Chimney Co. in Chelmsford. He’s been in this trade since before we opened this branch in 2014, trained through apprenticeship and certified through the Chimney Safety Institute of America. He knows the local building stock, the way freeze-thaw cycles in Middlesex County punish mortar, the particular clay flue tiles common in Billerica split-levels versus the unlined stone chimneys you find in Harvard.
What separates Russell from a franchise technician sent from a dispatch center is simple: he’s the one who answers for the work. He lives here. His kids went to school with kids from Acton and Littleton. On weekends he’s usually restoring an old wooden boat or fishing the Merrimack. He believes in showing up when he says, in explaining what he found in plain English, in leaving a home cleaner than he found it. If you hire us, Russell’s name is on it. That’s not marketing. That’s how he was raised.
Our Promise to Chelmsford Homeowners
Our values have a name: K.E.Y.S. Krafted right means trained journeymen, proper materials like DuraFlex liners and Famco dampers, no shortcuts on mortar mix or flashing detail. Every time means the 400th inspection in Tyngsborough gets the same care as the first in Chelmsford. Your home first means we work in your house the way we’d work in our mother’s, drop cloths, shoe covers, vacuuming the hearth before we leave. Standing behind it means our Keystone Standard: 90 days, in writing, no arguing.
We learned honest pricing the hard way, watching other companies pad bills with unnecessary work. Our policy is a flat-price sweep agreed before we book, and nothing additional without camera evidence you can see for yourself. We’ve told homeowners in Ayer and Shirley that their chimneys can wait another season, that the crack isn’t structural yet, that the money’s better spent elsewhere. That’s a square deal. That’s how you stay in business twelve years in one town.
Our Credentials
- State-licensed - Every pro working under our name is required to hold the license their state requires
- Insured & bonded - Protection for your home and property while we work
- Years of local experience - Serving Middlesex County since 2014
- Strong local reputation - Built one job at a time across Chelmsford and surrounding towns
These matter because you’re letting someone into your home, often onto your roof, always into the system that vents smoke and carbon monoxide from your family. A license means accountability. Insurance means if something goes wrong, you’re not left holding the bag. Local experience means we’ve seen the exact chimney type in your neighborhood before, and we know what fails first. Reputation means we plan to be here when you need us again, not gone next season with a new phone number.
Rooted in Chelmsford
We’re based in Chelmsford because this is where Russell lives, where his kids grew up, where he knows which streets flood in spring and which chimneys lean after hard winters. We’ve swept flues in the historic homes near the Common, inspected systems in the newer developments off Route 3, and rebuilt crowns in the neighborhoods tucked behind Drum Hill. We source our masonry supplies through Copperfield, a supplier that knows New England conditions. We hire local when we can, train apprentices into journeymen, and answer the phone with a live coordinator who knows the towns we serve. The hearthstone is the stone the whole home gathered around. That’s what we protect.
Written by Russell Haines, Owner at Hearthstone Chimney Co., serving Chelmsford since 2014.