Meet the Team - Hearthstone Chimney Co.

Meet the Cambridge Team Behind Hearthstone Chimney Co.

We’re the crew that shows up at your door in Cambridge with boot covers, a camera rig, and no appetite for surprises on your bill. Most of us live within twenty minutes of where we work, which means we know how Boston’s freeze-thaw cycles chew through chimney crowns, and we’ve seen what happens when squirrels get ambitious in Porter Square attics. What ties us together isn’t a handbook; it’s the K.E.Y.S. code Russell put in place back in 1984. Krafted right, Every time, Your home first, Standing behind it. That hasn’t changed in forty-two years.

Call (857) 392-4709

Our People

Russell Haines, Owner

I’m the one who answers the phone at odd hours when the answering service patches you through, and I’m the one who still climbs when a job gets complicated. Started Hearthstone in 1984 out of a used van and a borrowed brush set, back when Cambridge’s triple-deckers were still heated mostly by coal-converted chimneys. These days I hold a CSIA Master Chimney Sweep certification and spend more time on Level-2 inspections than I do on the roof, though I miss it sometimes. I keep a coffee can of antique clay flue liners in my office to show homeowners what they’re breathing past when I recommend an upgrade. The weirdest thing I’ve pulled from a firebox? A complete 1967 Red Sox scorecard, preserved nearly perfect. Guy had no idea his grandfather was hiding memorabilia from his grandmother.

Marcus T., Lead Technician

Marcus runs the Cambridge crew day-to-day and has been with us since 2011, which in this trade means he’s seen two full cycles of what winter does to poorly maintained chimneys. He’s CSIA-certified and carries a Factory-Trained credential from HeatShield, so when we’re resurfacing a deteriorated flue in a Harvard Square rental, he’s the one making the call on whether parging or a full liner makes sense. Marcus grew up in Somerville and still lives there with his two kids, which means he takes the Red Line to our Cambridge jobs when traffic on Mass Ave looks like a parking lot. He has a habit of photographing every stage of a repair, not because we require it, but because his father was a carpenter who taught him that the work should speak for itself. Homeowners mention him by name in reviews more than anyone else on the crew.

Elena V., Senior Installer

Elena handles our cap, crown, and liner installations across Cambridge and the immediate suburbs, and she’s the reason we can promise most jobs in a single visit. She came to us in 2016 after eight years in commercial HVAC sheet metal, which turns out to be perfect training for custom-fabricating chimney caps that actually fit pre-war masonry instead of looking like an afterthought. She’s factory-authorized for DuraFlex and Olympia Chimney liner systems, and she’s particular about sealants in a way that matters when you’re working six stories up on a Central Square condo. Elena lives in Arlington and commutes by bike when the weather cooperates, which she admits is less often than she’d prefer. Her detail: she keeps a small magnet on her tool belt specifically for fishing dropped fasteners out of cleanout doors. She’s retrieved over two hundred by her count.

Darnell J., Service Coordinator

Darnell is the live voice you get when you call (857) 392-4709 at 10 PM on a Sunday because you smelled something wrong after the first fire of the season. He’s been with Hearthstone since 2019 and knows every technician’s strengths, every supplier’s lead time, and which Cambridge neighborhoods have parking that’ll accommodate our ladder rack without a resident’s permit drama. He holds NFI certification as a gas specialist, which means he can triage over the phone whether what you’re describing sounds like a drafting issue or something that needs a truck roll tonight. Darnell grew up in Dorchester and still won’t let Marcus live down the time he sent him to a job on Putnam Avenue without warning him about the low-hanging branch. He keeps a handwritten log of every “weird call” he’s taken. The current leader: a homeowner in North Cambridge who was certain their chimney was haunted. It was a starling with a particular talent for acoustics.

Aisha K., Apprentice

Aisha joined us in 2024 through the CSIA’s apprenticeship pipeline and is working toward her sweep certification while she learns installation from Elena and inspection protocol from Marcus. She’s already certified in OSHA fall protection and has become our go-to for tight-space camera work in the older Cambridge chimney flues that weren’t built with modern tools in mind. Aisha grew up in Medford and studied architectural history at UMass Boston before deciding she wanted to work on old buildings rather than just write about them. She’s particularly good at explaining to homeowners why their 1890s chimney was built the way it was, and what that means for modern use. Her first solo job was a routine sweep on a rental in Inman Square where she found a complete squirrel nest that the tenant had been attributing to “draft noise” for three winters. She documented every stick of it for Marcus’s photo archive.

One Standard, Every Job

The K.E.Y.S. code isn’t something we hang on a wall in Cambridge and forget about in our other Massachusetts locations. Russell wrote it after a bad liner job in the late eighties that he had to redo at his own expense, and it’s governed every dispatch since. Krafted right means we don’t use builder-grade substitutes, even when a homeowner wouldn’t know the difference. Every time means the apprentice gets the same attention to detail as the owner. Your home first means boot covers, drop cloths, and vacuuming before we leave. Standing behind it means the 90-Day Done Right Promise in writing, no arguing.

We work exclusively with DuraFlex, HeatShield, Gelco, Olympia Chimney, Famco, and Copperfield because Russell’s tested the alternatives and won’t install what he wouldn’t put in his own house in Cambridge. The brands don’t change based on who’s available or what’s on sale. The pricing doesn’t change after we quote it. The person who answers your call is a person who works here, not a call center reading a script.

We’ve been in Cambridge long enough to see competitors come and go. The ones who last share one trait: they act like they’ll be around to answer for their work in thirty years. We plan to be.

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