Meet the Team - Hearthstone Chimney Co.

Meet the New City Team Behind Hearthstone Chimney Co.

We’re the crew that shows up at your door in New City, Rockland County, and the surrounding river towns. Four people, distinct jobs, one shared habit: we treat your chimney like it’s in our own house. That means no shortcuts past the flue, no mystery diagnoses, and no leaving until Russell Haines’ 90-Day Done Right Promise is already in motion. Most of us have been at this long enough to remember when New City was quieter and chimneys were still mostly masonry. We’ve adapted. The standard hasn’t.

Call (845) 599-0930

Our People

Russell Haines, Owner

I started Hearthstone Chimney Co. in 1984, which means I’ve swept, inspected, or repaired chimneys in New City through forty-two years of changing building codes, shifting fuel types, and the occasional homeowner who thought a fire extinguisher was proper fireplace maintenance. I’m New York State-certified for Level 1 and Level 2 chimney inspections, and I still climb roofs when the job calls for it, though these days I spend more time training our crew on what I call “the three-foot rule” - if you’re within three feet of a chimney, you’re looking at everything: cap, crown, flashing, brick condition, and whether the neighbor’s tree is planning an ambush. I live in Rockland County, and my own fireplace is a HeatShield system I installed myself in 2019. It still gets inspected annually. I recommend the same to everyone in New City.

Mike D., Lead Technician

Mike has been with us since 2011, which makes him the longest-tenured tech after Russell. He’s the one we send when a chimney in New City has multiple issues - say, a cracked flue tile, water intrusion near the shoulder, and a damper that’s been welded shut by rust. Mike holds CSIA certification and specializes in DuraFlex stainless steel liner installations, particularly the tricky retrofits in older Colonials around New City where the original flue was never built to modern standards. Off the job, he restores vintage motorcycles in a garage near Congers, a detail that explains his patience with seized hardware and his refusal to force a part that doesn’t fit. Homeowners mention him by name in referrals more than anyone else on the crew.

Angela R., Senior Installer

Angela joined us in 2017 after eight years in commercial HVAC, and she brought with her a rigor about airflow calculations that most residential chimney companies simply don’t apply. She’s our specialist for HeatShield cerfractory flue resurfacing and Gelco cap-and-crown assemblies, and she’s the reason we can offer single-visit completion on most liner and rebuild jobs in New City. Angela is factory-trained by both Olympia Chimney and Famco, and she’s particular about flashing details - in her words, “water is patient, and I’m patient back.” She lives in Valley Cottage, knows the freeze-thaw patterns of Rockland County winters firsthand, and will notice if your chimney crown has the wrong slope before she sets up her ladder. She also keeps a running list of the strangest things found in fireboxes: three tennis balls, a tax return from 1987, and one unopened bottle of champagne.

Dave K., Service Coordinator

Dave answers the phone when you call (845) 599-0930, which means he’s the live person picking up at 11 PM on a Saturday when you smell something wrong from the fireplace. He’s been with Hearthstone since 2019, and before that he ran dispatch for a plumbing outfit in Westchester, so he actually understands the geography of our service area rather than reading from a map. Dave schedules every New City appointment, confirms material orders for the next day’s jobs, and follows up after completion to make sure the 90-Day Done Right Promise paperwork reached you. He’s the one who explains why we can’t give a firm repair quote over the phone - because Russell insists on camera evidence first - and he’s good at translating “my chimney smells like a campfire in July” into the right dispatch priority. Dave grew up in Nanuet, still lives there, and can tell you which New City neighborhoods tend to have pre-1950s clay flue tiles versus the poured-in-place systems from the 1980s.

Javier M., Apprentice Technician

Javier started with us in 2023, moving over from a general handyman operation in Stony Point where he’d done some gutter and siding work. He’s in his second year of formal chimney-specific training, working toward CSIA certification, and currently handles sweep-and-inspection appointments under senior supervision, plus the physical demands of ladder work and equipment transport that the rest of us are frankly getting too old for. Javier has already developed a specialty in identifying early-stage crown deterioration - small hairline cracks that most homeowners miss until water has done real damage. He’s the one who asks the questions newer homeowners in New City don’t know to ask: when was the last sweep, what fuel do you actually burn versus what the fireplace was built for, and whether you’ve noticed any white staining on the exterior brick. He lives in Haverstraw, commutes past enough chimneys to keep his eye sharp, and is prohibited by unanimous crew vote from ever again mentioning how “quick” a job looks before he’s opened the cleanout door.

One Standard, Every Job

We’re not a franchise. We’re not a rotating cast of subcontractors. The four of us, plus Russell, are the New City presence of Hearthstone Chimney Co., and we report to the same standard that governs every crew in the network: the K.E.Y.S. code - Krafted right, Every time, Your home first, Standing behind it. That means the 90-Day Done Right Promise applies whether Mike is installing a DuraFlex liner in a Clarkstown cape or Angela is resurfacing a flue near the Palisades Center. It means Dave answers with the same information at midnight as at noon. It means Javier’s inspections are reviewed against the same photo-documentation standard as Russell’s. We’ve been in New City long enough to know that reputation moves slower than Google reviews but lasts longer. We plan to be here thirty more years. We act accordingly.

Written by Russell Haines, Owner at Hearthstone Chimney Co., serving New City since 1984.