How Hearthstone Chimney Co. Was Born in Freeport
Back in 2014, we were working out of a garage in Roosevelt, subcontracting for a few bigger outfits that covered all of Long Island. One October morning, we got sent to a house on East Seaman Avenue in Freeport. The homeowner was a retired carpenter, maybe seventy, and he’d already had two companies out to fix the same draft problem. Both had sold him something, a new damper on one visit, a “draft inducer” fan the next. Fourteen hundred dollars, and his living room still smelled like smoke every time he lit a fire.
We spent twenty minutes with a flashlight and a mirror, found a cracked flue tile three feet down that was pulling air the wrong way. The other guys had never looked. They’d sold him hardware he didn’t need because hardware has a price tag, and looking takes time. We fixed the tile, charged him for the repair, and he walked us out to the truck and just stood there on the sidewalk. He said, “You’re the first one who actually looked.”
That night, we called the parent company and asked about opening a dedicated Freeport branch. We wanted to build something where looking came first, where the bill matched what was actually wrong, and where a homeowner could call back and reach someone who remembered their house. Hearthstone Chimney Co. in Freeport started the next spring.
Russell Haines’s Personal Connection to the Chimney Cleaning Trade
Russell Haines didn’t plan on chimneys. He’d been working construction since high school, framing mostly, and he liked the math of it, the way a wall had to be true or everything above it failed. But framing is seasonal, and one November a crew foreman asked if he’d help on a chimney rebuild. The mason had hurt his back. Russell said yes because the rent was due.
The first thing that struck him was the smell. Not creosote, though that’s there, but the smell of old fires, of a hundred winters in one flue. He climbed that scaffold with a hod of mortar and looked out over Merrick rooftops, every chimney smoking or still, every one a hearth someone gathered around. The mason he’d replaced showed him how to read a flue the way you read grain in wood, how a crack here meant water there, how a draft that pulled wrong could kill a family in their sleep. Russell went home that night with soot in his hair and something he couldn’t name yet.
He started asking to tag along on sweeps. He learned to run a brush, then a camera, then to explain to a homeowner what he was seeing without making them feel stupid for not knowing. That mattered to him. His own father had been a man who hated asking for help, who’d rather guess at a problem than call someone who might talk down to him. Russell decided he’d be the one who didn’t talk down.
Ten years in, what gets him out of bed is still that moment when the camera comes out of the flue and the homeowner sees what he sees. The relief when it’s clean, or the clarity when it’s not, and they know exactly what they’re dealing with. If he weren’t doing this, he’d probably be back to framing, but he’d miss the houses, the families, the particular trust of being invited to work in someone’s home.
Meet Russell Haines - The Person Behind Every Job
Russell Haines, Owner & Founder
Russell leads every job that carries his name. He’s trained under certified sweeps, holds the credentials his trade requires, and has spent the last decade learning the particular chimneys of Nassau County, the way salt air off Lido Beach eats mortar, how the clay soil in Uniondale shifts flues, which Roosevelt neighborhoods were built with unlined brick that needs watching.
What sets him apart from a franchise technician is simple: he’s the one who answers for the work. He lives here. His kids go to school here. On Saturdays you’ll find him at the Baldwin Harbor marina, working on an old Boston Whaler he bought cheap and rebuilt himself, badly at first, then better. That boat taught him something he talks about with new apprentices: you can read all the manuals, but competence comes from doing it wrong, owning it, and doing it again until it’s right.
His commitment to you is direct. When Russell says he’ll be there, he’ll be there. When he says it needs fixing, he’ll show you why. And when it’s done, it’s done right.
Our Promise to Freeport Homeowners
We run on four principles we call the K.E.Y.S.:
Krafted right. We use proper materials, no shortcuts. When we rebuilt a chimney crown in North Bellmore last winter, we specified an Olympia Chimney cap and poured the crown to shed water, not pool it. The homeowner called back in spring to say it was the first March he hadn’t found a leak.
Every time. The four hundredth inspection gets the same care as the first. We don’t speed up because we’re busy. Our schedule runs Monday through Saturday, 7:30 AM to 7:30 PM weekdays, 7:30 AM to 6:30 PM Saturday, 7:30 AM to 6:30 PM Sunday, and we book what we can handle properly.
Your home first. We work in your house the way we’d work in our mother’s. Boots off or covered, drop cloths down, vacuum running. A homeowner in Oceanside once told us we left her hearth cleaner than she keeps it. That’s the standard.
Standing behind it. The Keystone Standard, applied to chimneys: 90 days, in writing, no arguing. If it’s not right, we come back. No paperwork, no runaround.
Our Credentials
State-licensed. Every pro working under our name is required to hold the license and insurance their state requires. That matters because an unlicensed sweep working on your chimney can leave you liable if something goes wrong, and it often does.
Insured & bonded. Accidents in a home are rare but real. Our coverage protects your property and our people, so a mishap doesn’t become your mortgage problem.
Years of local experience. We’ve been sweeping, inspecting, and repairing chimneys in Freeport and the surrounding towns since 2014. We know which Merrick neighborhoods have the unlined post-war flues, where Uniondale’s clay soil shifts foundations, how the salt air off Lido Beach accelerates mortar decay.
Strong local reputation. We didn’t build it with ads. We built it by showing up, doing the work, and letting homeowners tell their neighbors. In a town like Freeport, that still works.
These credentials matter because chimney work happens inside your home, on your roof, in the structure that keeps your family warm and safe. You’re not buying a product you can return. You’re trusting someone with fire, carbon monoxide, and the integrity of your house. That trust has to be earned, and we earn it with proof.
Rooted in Freeport
We’re not passing through. Russell lives in the area, and our service radius, Freeport, Merrick, Uniondale, Roosevelt, North Merrick, Baldwin Harbor, Lido Beach, Baldwin, South Hempstead, Bellmore, Oceanside, North Bellmore, is drawn by where we can arrive on time and do the job without rushing home. We’ve swept chimneys on the same Freeport blocks where we buy coffee, where our kids play sports, where we vote. The hearthstone is the stone the whole home gathered around. That’s not just our name. It’s what we believe a local business should be, a place the community can gather around, steady and certain, still here when you need us again.
Written by Russell Haines, Owner at Hearthstone Chimney Co., serving Freeport since 2014.