Level 1 sweep and inspection to the NFPA 211 annual standard - flue, crown, cap, and flashing checked and photographed
Chimney sweep logs do not sweep chimneys. They loosen some creosote - which then falls where a brush and vacuum still have to collect it.
Before
After
Before
After
Before
AfterMeet the White Plains Team Behind Hearthstone Chimney Co.
We’re the crew that shows up at your door in White Plains, not some dispatch board in another state. Every technician here lives in Westchester or the lower Hudson Valley, and we’ve worked on chimneys from the historic homes near Saxon Woods to the newer builds off the Hutch. What ties us together is simple: we treat your house like we live next door, because in most cases, we practically do. Russell Haines built this company on that idea back in 1984, and it’s still how we hire, train, and show up every morning.
Our People
Russell Haines, Owner
I started Hearthstone Chimney Co. in 1984, sweeping flues by hand with a brush I bought from a hardware store on Mamaroneck Avenue that closed years ago. Forty-two years later, I’m still on job sites most weeks, usually when a Level-2 inspection turns up something that needs a second set of eyes. I’m CSIA-certified and hold a NFI Master Hearth certification, but the credential that matters to me is the one I can’t frame: showing up at the same White Plains breakfast spot for three decades and having customers stop by my table to say their chimney’s still drawing clean. My truck is a 2012 F-250 with 287,000 miles on it. I’ve rebuilt the transmission twice. The third time, I’m buying a new truck.
Mike D., Lead Technician
Mike runs the crew that handles our chimney cleaning and repair work across White Plains, Scarsdale, and down into the Sound Shore towns. He’s been with us fourteen years, starting as an apprentice the week after he finished his military service, and he carries a CSIA Certified Chimney Sweep credential plus factory training on DuraFlex liner systems. Mike’s the one we send when a homeowner calls worried about a smoking fireplace on Thanksgiving morning, which happens more often than you’d think in the houses near the Silver Lake Preserve where the flues were sized for coal. He keeps a battered copy of the National Fire Protection Association codebook in his truck, annotated with notes from every job he’s done since 2011. On weekends, he restores vintage motorcycles in a garage in Valhalla that has its own chimney problems.
Elena R., Senior Installer
Elena specializes in chimney liner replacement, crown rebuilds, and the kind of masonry work that most sweeps won’t touch. She came to us from a commercial HVAC background, bringing eight years of sheet metal and exhaust system experience that translates directly to the stainless steel and aluminum liner systems we install. She’s factory-certified on HeatShield cerfractory resurfacing and Gelco cap installations, and she’s the only person on our crew who can explain why a chimney in White Plains needs different waterproofing than one in Yonkers without making your eyes glaze over. Elena grew up in a 1920s Tudor in Hartsdale with seven fireplaces, six of which were blocked off by the time she was ten. She’s made it her mission to reopen every one of them, starting with her parents’ living room flue last spring.
James T., Service Coordinator
James is the live voice that answers when you call (914) 603-1360 at 10 PM on a Saturday or 6 AM on a Tuesday. He’s been with Hearthstone for six years, and before that he dispatched for a fuel oil company during the winters of 2014 and 2015, which taught him everything about managing homeowner panic during the first cold snap. James schedules our inspections, routes the trucks to minimize drive time across Westchester, and makes sure every customer gets the photo report and plain-English verdict within 24 hours of a Level-2 inspection. He lives in White Plains proper, near the train station, and he walks to work when the weather’s decent. He keeps a whiteboard behind his desk with every technician’s location updated in real time, though he admits the GPS tracking on the trucks has made his color-coding system mostly ceremonial.
Darnell W., Apprentice
Darnell joined us in 2023 through a workforce development program partnered with the Westchester Building Trades. He’s completing his CSIA certification this year and already handles standard chimney sweeps and basic cap installations under senior supervision. What Darnell brings is a carefulness you don’t always see in younger techs, probably from his previous work as a cable installer where one mis-drilled hole in a lath-and-plaster wall meant hours of repair. He’s assigned to Mike D. for field training, and he’s logged over 200 sweeps in his first eighteen months. Darnell lives with his grandmother in a 1948 Cape Cod near Gedney Park, and he’s become our unofficial expert on the particular creosote buildup patterns you get from older boilers vented into unlined chimneys, because he’s cleaned hers three times.
One Standard, Every Job
The White Plains crew works under the same 90-Day Done Right Promise that governs every Hearthstone location. Krafted right, Every time, Your home first, Standing behind it. That’s not a slogan on a poster; it’s how Mike decides whether a liner joint needs another inspection pass, how Elena calculates crown slope for drainage, how James explains why we’re recommending a repair you didn’t expect. Russell Haines put those four words in writing because he got tired of watching other companies argue with customers over callbacks. We don’t argue. If it’s not right, we come back. No paperwork, no runaround.
Every technician here is background-checked and uniformed. Most jobs finish in a single visit because we stock professional-grade materials from DuraFlex, HeatShield, Gelco, Olympia Chimney, Famco, and Copperfield on every truck. The estimate we give you is the number on the invoice. We’ve been in White Plains long enough to know that the homes near Battle Hill have different chimney problems than the ones off Central Avenue, and we plan to be here long enough to see how those problems change. That’s the difference between a company that sweeps chimneys and one that treats your house like it’s going to be standing when our grandchildren are old enough to need their own flues inspected.
Written by Russell Haines, Owner at Hearthstone Chimney Co., serving White Plains since 1984.