Meet the Team - Hearthstone Chimney Co.

Meet the Waltham Team Behind Hearthstone Chimney Co.

We’re the crew that shows up at your door in Waltham when your chimney needs attention. Some of us have been doing this since before the Route 128 corridor became what it is now. What keeps us together isn’t a handbook. It’s the stubborn belief that a homeowner should understand exactly what’s wrong with their chimney before they spend a dollar fixing it. That, and we don’t tolerate shortcuts. Never have.

Call (781) 905-8338

Our People

Russell Haines, Owner

I started Hearthstone Chimney Co. in 1984, the same year the Celtics won their last championship of that era. Back then, Waltham was a different town, more factory floors than biotech labs, and most chimneys were still venting oil or coal residue that would make today’s homeowners wince. I’ve swept flues in Victorians along Main Street, inspected liners in the post-war capes near the Charles River, and lost count of how many times I’ve explained why you can’t burn Christmas wrapping paper without sending flaming fragments up the stack. I’m a CSIA Certified Chimney Sweep and hold a Massachusetts Construction Supervisor License. What I actually do most days now is train our crew and review every camera inspection report before it goes to a homeowner. If the photos don’t tell a clear story, I send the tech back up the ladder. My truck still has a cassette deck that I never got around to replacing. The radio works fine.

Mike D., Lead Technician

Mike joined us in 2009 after eight years running his own small handyman operation in Lowell. He realized he was spending half his time fixing other contractors’ chimney work and figured he might as well do it right from the start. He’s NFI Certified for gas and wood-burning hearth systems, and he’s the one we send when a Waltham homeowner calls with a persistent smoke problem that three other companies couldn’t solve. Mike has a methodical streak that can seem slow until you realize he’s eliminating variables in his head while he’s still on the roof. He lives in Watertown with two greyhounds and a wood stove he rebuilt himself from a 1970s Vermont Castings shell he found at a estate sale in Newton.

Sandra K., Senior Installer

Sandra came to us in 2016 from a commercial HVAC background, which means she thinks in terms of system pressure and flow paths in a way that makes her liner installations unusually clean. She’s factory-trained on DuraFlex and HeatShield applications, and she’s completed more Olympia Chimney stainless steel liner pulls in Waltham and the surrounding towns than anyone else on our crew. Sandra’s the one who talks homeowners through why their clay flue tiles are cracked without making them feel foolish for not noticing sooner. She grew up in a triple-decker in Somerville with a landlord who never maintained anything, which she says is why she can’t walk past a damaged chimney cap without fixing it. She commutes from Arlington on a motorcycle, weather permitting, which in Massachusetts means about seven months a year.

James T., Service Coordinator

James answers the phones. That’s how he describes his job, though what he actually does is keep four technicians scheduled across fifteen towns without anyone sitting in traffic on the Mass Pike longer than necessary. He’s been with us since 2019, and he’s the reason a live person picks up when you call Hearthstone at 11 PM on a Saturday in January because you smelled something odd from your fireplace. James grew up in Waltham, graduated from Waltham High, and still lives in the Piety Corner neighborhood. He knows which streets have the narrow driveways that require parking the truck on the street, which inspectors prefer Level-2 reports formatted a certain way, and which Waltham homeowners have wood stoves versus inserts versus open hearths without checking the file. He plays bass in a band that practices in a converted mill building off Moody Street. They’re not good, in his words, but they’re consistent.

Elena R., Apprentice Technician

Elena started with us in 2023, moving from a general construction background where she specialized in historic restoration work around Boston. She’s pursuing her CSIA certification and has already completed factory training on Gelco and Famco cap and damper systems. We pair her with Mike or Sandra on every job until she’s seen a problem enough times to recognize the variations. Elena has a particular interest in the masonry side of the trade, the tuckpointing and crown rebuilds that most sweeps avoid because the work is slow and weather-dependent. She lives in a 1920s duplex in Waltham near the Lyman Estate and is slowly restoring her own fireplace, which the previous owner had painted over in latex. She documents everything on a beat-up clipboard she refuses to replace with a tablet. Says she doesn’t trust anything that dies when the battery runs out.

One Standard, Every Job

The K.E.Y.S. code isn’t a poster on a wall. It’s how we decide what to do when no one’s watching. Krafted right, Every time, Your home first, Standing behind it. Russell wrote that in 2010 after a job in Waltham where a competitor had installed a liner that didn’t fit the flue properly, and the homeowner had lived with it for three years because no one had shown them the photos to prove it.

Every technician on this page carries the same 90-Day Done Right Promise. In writing. No arguing. If it’s not right, we come back. The brands we use, DuraFlex, HeatShield, Gelco, Olympia Chimney, Famco, and Copperfield, are the same whether the job is a cap replacement on a Waltham ranch or a full rebuild in a Back Bay brownstone. The camera inspection, the photo report, the plain-English verdict, that’s standard on every call. We don’t have a premium tier because we don’t have a cut-rate one.

Most jobs finish in a single visit. The estimate you agree to is the number on the invoice. And when you call (781) 905-8338, a live person answers. Every day, every hour. That’s not a feature. That’s the minimum.

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