How Hearthstone Chimney Co. Was Born in Hicksville
Back in 2014, we were working chimney jobs across Long Island and kept seeing the same thing. A homeowner in Levittown called us after another company had been out, told her she needed a full liner replacement for close to four figures, and she’d paid a deposit before she thought to get a second opinion. We ran our camera. The liner had some staining, sure, but it was structurally sound. We cleaned it, showed her the footage, and she used her fireplace that winter without issue. She cried on the phone when we told her. Not from relief, from anger at being made to feel stupid in her own home.
That same week, we got a call about a draft problem in East Meadow that two other sweeps had given up on. Took us most of a Saturday, but we found it: a partially collapsed flue tile three feet down, hidden behind a healthy-looking section. The homeowner had been burning fires with smoke backing up into the bedroom wall cavity. He didn’t know how close he’d come.
We drove back to Hicksville that evening and made a decision. This market needed someone who would look a homeowner in the eye, show them exactly what the camera sees, and tell them the truth even when the truth is “you’re fine, just needs a sweep.” No commissioned upsells. No scare tactics. No paperwork storms. We opened this branch of Hearthstone Chimney Co. to bring that standard to Nassau County, and we’ve been at it ever since.
Russell Haines’s Personal Connection to the Chimney Cleaning Trade
Russell didn’t stumble into this work. He was pulled into it by the physical reality of it, the way some people are pulled into woodworking or mechanical repair. The first time he went up on a roof for a chimney cap installation, it was February, the shingles were still damp from melted frost, and the air smelled like cold metal and old soot. His hands went numb setting the drill. He came down filthy, sore, and completely certain he’d found what he wanted to do.
That was over a decade ago now. What kept him wasn’t the romance of it. There’s no romance in creosote. What kept him was the moment after a job, standing in someone’s living room with a tablet, walking them through photos of their own flue, watching them understand their house in a way they never had. The hearthstone is the stone the whole home gathered around. Russell took that seriously from the start. Still does.
He’s told us more than once: if he weren’t doing this, he’d probably be restoring old houses somewhere, working with his hands until they cramped, figuring out how things were built and how to keep them standing. The patience for that work is the same patience he brings to a stubborn smoke chamber or a liner that doesn’t want to seat right. He’ll sit with a problem until it gives. We’ve seen him restart a job at four in the afternoon because something wasn’t sitting right in his gut, not his tools.
What gets him out of bed is the knowledge that most chimney problems don’t announce themselves. They smolder. They leak carbon monoxide slowly enough that no detector catches it, or they build creosote until a stray spark does the rest. Every fireplace he certifies safe, every homeowner who learns to read their own draft pattern, that’s someone who gets to keep gathering around their hearth without worry. That’s the work. Everything else is just how we pay for the truck.
Meet Russell Haines - The Person Behind Every Job
Russell Haines is the Owner and Founder of Hearthstone Chimney Co. here in Hicksville. He’s a certified chimney sweep with level-2 inspection training and years of hands-on experience in masonry repair, flue relining, and fireplace restoration. He doesn’t send technicians to jobs he wouldn’t take himself. When you book with us, Russell either handles your service directly or oversees it personally. No franchise rotation, no trainee left unsupervised.
What separates Russell from a corporate technician is simple: he’s the one who answers for the work. He lives in this community. His reputation is tied to every job we complete in Hicksville, Levittown, East Meadow, and the surrounding towns. On weekends, he’s usually working on his own old house, a 1920s colonial with a fireplace he rebuilt brick by brick, or fishing the north shore when the weather allows. That same stubborn attention to detail shows up in your chimney inspection. He won’t sign off on work he wouldn’t accept in his own home.
Here’s his commitment to you, directly: we will show you what we found, explain what it means in plain English, and never recommend work you don’t need. If we wouldn’t pay for it ourselves, we won’t ask you to.
Our Promise to Hicksville Homeowners
Our values aren’t decoration. We call them K.E.Y.S., and we use them to settle arguments in the truck on the way to jobs.
Krafted right means trained journeymen, proper materials, no shortcuts. We use Gelco and Olympia Chimney products for relining work because we’ve seen how they hold up in Long Island’s freeze-thaw cycles. Famco caps and Copperfield components when the spec calls for them. We don’t substitute to save a few dollars.
Every time means the four hundredth inspection gets the same care as the first. We photograph every flue from top to bottom. We check every damper operation. The routine protects against the day something isn’t routine.
Your home first means we work the way we’d work in our mother’s house. Drop cloths, shoe covers, vacuuming the hearth before we leave. We’ve heard stories about sweeps who tracked soot through white carpet. That’s a firing offense in our book.
Standing behind it means the Keystone Standard, applied to chimneys: 90 days, in writing, no arguing. If it’s not right, we come back. No paperwork storm, no transfer to a warranty department that doesn’t answer. Russell’s phone is answered by a live coordinator who connects you with our local team, and that includes when something needs fixing.
Our Credentials
Every professional working under the Hearthstone Chimney Co. name in Hicksville is required to hold the license and insurance their state requires. We maintain state-licensed status, carry full insurance and bonding, and bring years of local experience specific to Nassau County building stock and climate conditions. We’ve built our reputation one job at a time in this community.
- State-licensed - required credentials verified and current
- Insured & bonded - protection for your property and our team
- Years of local experience - Long Island chimneys, Long Island weather, Long Island codes
- Strong local reputation - established through documented work and verifiable customer relationships
Why this matters to you: a chimney professional works inside your home, on your roof, and in the structural systems that protect your family from fire and carbon monoxide. Licensing ensures baseline training. Insurance protects you if something goes wrong. Bonding provides recourse for incomplete or improper work. Local experience means we know that Jericho clay flues fail differently than Bethpage brick, that Salisbury’s wind exposure requires specific cap designs, and that Hicksville’s permit process has quirks we’ve navigated before. These aren’t resume points. They’re the difference between a technician who guesses and one who knows.
Rooted in Hicksville
We’ve swept chimneys in the ranch houses off Jerusalem Avenue, inspected flues in the split-levels near Broadway Mall, and done masonry repair on colonials in the streets between Old Country Road and the Northern State. We know which neighborhoods in Levittown have the original 1940s clay flues still in service, and which East Meadow developments were built with prefab fireplaces that need specific care. We’ve worked through Long Island winters cold enough to crack mortar and summers humid enough to grow moss on north-facing chimney shoulders.
Hearthstone Chimney Co. is part of this place now. We hire locally, train apprentices into journeymen, and plan to be the company Hicksville calls in twenty years when today’s new homeowner needs their first level-2 inspection. The hearthstone is the stone the whole home gathered around. We’re keepers of that tradition here.
Written by Russell Haines, Owner at Hearthstone Chimney Co., serving Hicksville since 2014.