How Hearthstone Chimney Co. Was Born in Smithtown
Back in 2014, we were still working for another outfit out of Suffolk County, running calls from Hauppauge to Kings Park. One October afternoon, we got sent to a house on Landing Avenue in Smithtown. The homeowner, a woman maybe seventy years old, had been told by another company that her entire flue liner was shot and needed replacement. The quote she’d been given would have cost her more than her first car. We ran our camera up that flue, and what we found was a cracked crown letting water in, some degraded mortar joints, and a liner that was actually in decent shape. Three hundred dollars in proper crown sealing and tuckpointing, and she was safe for the burning season.
She cried when we showed her the footage. Not from relief, from anger. She’d been sitting on that quote for two weeks, thinking she’d have to choose between heat and her medication. We drove back to the shop fuming. That night, we made two phone calls. One to the owner of Hearthstone Chimney Co., who’d built a brand on exactly the kind of work we’d just done, and one to our wife, saying we were going to bring that standard to Smithtown proper. No more sending crews from forty minutes away who treated Suffolk County like one big zip code. We’d know the local clay soils that shift crowns on Nesconset colonials. We’d know which St. James neighborhoods had the unlined chimneys from the 1960s building boom. We’d answer to our neighbors, not a dispatcher in another county.
The branch opened that winter. Twelve years later, we’re still on Landing Avenue sometimes, and that homeowner still calls us every September to book her inspection.
Russell Haines’s Personal Connection to the Chimney Cleaning Trade
We didn’t grow up in this trade. We came to it sideways, through a house we couldn’t afford to fix.
In our late twenties, we bought a foreclosure on the edge of Lake Ronkonkoma, a 1924 Dutch Colonial with a fireplace that had been sealed up with plywood and prayers. The first cold snap, we ripped that plywood off, bought a cord of oak from a guy in Fort Salonga, and lit what we thought was a fire. What we got was a smoke-filled living room and a lesson in what happens when nobody’s cleaned a flue in fifteen years. The creosote buildup looked like burnt peanut butter, thick and tar-black. The smell of it, sharp and chemical, stayed in our nose for days.
We couldn’t afford a sweep. So we bought a set of poly rods, a wire brush, and a book from a supply house that sold Olympia Chimney gear. Spent a Saturday on the roof in January, freezing, learning by feel how a brush catches on a rough flue joint, how resistance tells you where the damage is. When we finally got that chimney drawing clean, the fire that night was the warmest we’d ever felt. Not because the room was hot, but because we’d earned it. We’d taken something broken and made it safe with our own hands.
That feeling became the addiction. We started helping neighbors, then friends of friends. The physical part of it, sure, the soot and the height and the weather. But more than that, the detective work. Every chimney has a story written in its flue. Water intrusion leaves white efflorescence, like salt on a pretzel. A chimney fire leaves alligator cracking, thin and patterned. Poor wood species leaves glazed creosote, shiny and hard as obsidian. Reading that story and telling it plain to a homeowner, that’s the part that still gets us up before dawn.
If we weren’t doing this, we’d probably be restoring old boats out in Port Jefferson. Same thing, really. Taking something that holds heat and keeping it sound for the people who depend on it.
Meet Russell Haines - The Person Behind Every Job
Russell Haines, Owner and Founder of Hearthstone Chimney Co. in Smithtown. Russell holds state licensure and has completed the training and certification path required for level-2 inspection work, including camera diagnostics and masonry evaluation. Before opening this branch, Russell spent years in the field across Suffolk County, working every kind of chimney from unlined farmhouse stacks to modern factory-built units.
What separates Russell from a franchise technician is simple: he’s the one who answers for the work. Not a regional manager, not a call center. When a job in Commack needs a second look, Russell is the one who drives back. When a homeowner in Nissequogue doesn’t understand why their crown is spalling, Russell sits with them on the porch and explains it until they do. Off the clock, he’s usually in his workshop rebuilding vintage hand planes, the kind of work where there’s no hiding a sloppy joint. That same patience, that same refusal to call something finished before it’s right, is what he brings to every flue he inspects.
Our commitment to you is personal. We will never recommend work you don’t need, and we will never leave a job we wouldn’t sign off on for our own mother’s house.
Our Promise to Smithtown Homeowners
Our values aren’t framed on a wall. They’re settled at the end of every job, when a homeowner decides whether to save our number or throw away the invoice.
Krafted right. We use proper materials, not whatever’s cheapest this quarter. Famco dampers when the job calls for them. DuraFlex relining for the flues that need it. Copperfield supply-house standards on every tool we carry. Our journeymen are trained to know the difference between a flue that needs sweeping and one that needs rebuilding, and we don’t send apprentices to make that call alone.
Every time. The 400th inspection gets the same ladder placement, the same camera run, the same photo documentation as the first. We’ve seen companies get sloppy in their fifth year. We’re in our twelfth, and the only way that happens is by refusing to let “good enough” into the vocabulary.
Your home first. We lay runners on your floor. We ask about your dog before we open the door. We explain what we’re doing while we do it, because it’s your house and you’re entitled to understand what’s happening inside it.
Standing behind it. The Keystone Standard, applied to chimneys: 90 days, in writing, no arguing. If we missed something, we come back. No paperwork war, no he-said-she-said.
Our Credentials
Licensing: State-licensed chimney contractor, meeting all New York requirements for residential flue work and masonry repair.
Insurance & Bonding: Fully insured and bonded. This matters because we’re working on your roof, inside your flue, and around your family. If something goes wrong, you’re not chasing a policy through the mail.
Local Experience: Twelve years serving Suffolk County, with deep familiarity in Smithtown, Commack, Hauppauge, Nesconset, Ronkonkoma, Lake Ronkonkoma, Kings Park, St. James, Nissequogue, Village of the Branch, Islandia, and Fort Salonga. We know the local building stock, the local soils that shift foundations, and the local weather patterns that punish chimneys.
Reputation: Strong local standing built one job at a time, one neighbor telling another.
These credentials matter because a chimney isn’t a faucet. A bad flue job can kill you with carbon monoxide or burn your house down. When you let someone into your home to work on a system that carries fire and toxic gas, you need more than a friendly smile. You need proof they know what they’re doing, proof they’re accountable if they don’t, and proof they’ll still be around to answer for it. We’ve been here twelve years. We plan to be here when your grandchildren need their chimneys swept.
Rooted in Smithtown
We live here. Our kids went to school here. We know which week in October the oak leaves on Jericho Turnpike start dropping into flue caps, and we know which St. James blocks flood their basements in March and need their hearth appliances checked for moisture damage. We’ve swept chimneys on the old farmhouses out past Fort Salonga and on the split-levels near Lake Ronkonkoma that went up fast in the seventies. The hearthstone is the stone the whole home gathered around, and that’s not just our name. It’s how we think about this work. Keeping the home safe, keeping the heat where it belongs, keeping our word to the neighbors who’ve made us part of their September ritual for twelve years now.
Written by Russell Haines, Owner at Hearthstone Chimney Co., serving Smithtown since 2014.