How Hearthstone Chimney Co. Was Born in Toms River
Back in 2014, we were working out of another shop when a call came in from a woman in Toms River’s North Dover section. Her chimney had been “inspected” by two different companies that same month. Both told her she needed a full liner replacement, quoted her thousands, and pressed her to sign that day. Something felt off to her. She found us through a neighbor.
We brought our camera up that flue. What we found was a cracked crown letting water in, and some creosote glazing, nothing more. A liner replacement would have been money thrown away. We fixed the crown, swept the flue, and she sat at her kitchen table and cried. Not from relief, from anger at what she’d almost paid for.
That night, driving home past the Toms River along Route 9, we decided this market needed something different. Hearthstone Chimney Co. already existed as a brand built on square dealing and documented work. We opened this branch to bring that standard to Ocean County. No scare tactics. No pushing work a chimney doesn’t need. Every recommendation backed by photos the homeowner can see with their own eyes. That’s the only way we operate.
Russell Haines’s Personal Connection to the Chimney Cleaning Trade
We didn’t stumble into this work. We were drawn to it.
Russell Haines started as an apprentice in 2004, ten years before bringing Hearthstone to Toms River. The tradesman who trained him was old-school, the kind who could read a flue by the sound of the brush. Russell spent his first winter carrying rods up icy ladders in the Pine Barrens, learning how wind off Barnegat Bay affects draft differently than inland gusts. His hands cracked in the cold. His clothes smelled of soot and metal polish. He loved it.
What hooked him was the hidden nature of the work. A chimney looks like a simple brick column from the outside. Inside, it’s a precision instrument, shaped by physics, threatened by chemistry, betrayed by water and time. Russell learned to see what others missed: the hairline crack that would widen through freeze-thaw cycles, the creosote pattern that signaled a wood-burning habit needing correction, the flue gas path that explained why a family was getting headaches every January.
By 2012, he was running his own crew. But something gnawed at him. The industry was filling with salesmen in sweep uniforms, commission-driven, trained to find expensive problems. He watched good people in Ocean County get talked into work their chimneys didn’t need. He knew the Hearthstone brand from reputation, certified sweeps, camera documentation, no shortcuts. When the chance came to open the Toms River branch in 2014, he took it.
What gets Russell out of bed now, twelve years later, is the same thing: a homeowner who finally understands their own house. The camera screen showing them what we see. The moment of recognition. If he weren’t doing this, he’d probably be restoring old boats, something else that rewards patience and punishes corner-cutting.
Meet Russell Haines - The Person Behind Every Job
Russell Haines is Owner & Founder of Hearthstone Chimney Co. in Toms River. He’s a certified chimney sweep with level-2 inspection training and twelve years running this branch. Before that, a decade in the trade, starting with rods and brushes and working up to masonry repair and flue relining.
What separates Russell from a franchise technician sent from a dispatch center is simple: he’s the one who answers for every job. His name is on the company. His truck carries the tools he selected. On weekends, you’ll find him rebuilding a 1968 Boston Whaler in his garage in Beachwood, a project entering its third year because he’s doing it right, not fast. That same patience applies to your chimney.
His commitment to you is direct: “I won’t recommend work I wouldn’t pay for myself, and I won’t leave a job I’d be ashamed to show my mother.”
Our Promise to Toms River Homeowners
Our values aren’t posters on a wall. They’re how we settle disputes, choose materials, and sleep at night. We call them K.E.Y.S.
Krafted right means trained journeymen, proper materials, no shortcuts. We use Copperfield and DuraFlex products where they fit the job, not because they’re cheapest. We’ve torn out cheap liners that failed in five years. We don’t install what we’d have to tear out later.
Every time means the 400th sweep gets the rod-by-rod care of the first. No rushing to hit a quota.
Your home first means we lay drop cloths before we unload tools, and we explain what we’re doing in plain English, not jargon designed to confuse.
Standing behind it is our Keystone Standard: 90 days, in writing, no arguing. If it’s not right, we come back. No paperwork war, no runaround.
Honest pricing means a flat-price sweep agreed before we book, and nothing added without your okay. Quality parts mean we document what we use and why. Standing behind every job means our guarantee is printed, not promised and forgotten.
Our Credentials
- State-licensed chimney sweep contractor
- Insured & bonded for residential work
- Twelve years serving Toms River and Ocean County
- Strong local reputation built job by job
Every pro working under our name is required to hold the license and insurance their state requires. That’s not just paperwork. It’s protection for you when someone is on your roof, in your attic, working with fire and carbon monoxide systems in your home. A homeowner in Crestwood Village once asked us why bonding matters. We told her: if a sweep damages your roof or a tool goes through your ceiling, bonded coverage means you’re not calling your own homeowner’s policy and eating a deductible. Licensing means someone with authority checked that we know flue gas flow and fire clearance rules, not just brush technique. Twelve years in Toms River means we’ve swept chimneys in the same neighborhoods where we shop, where our kids went to school, where our reputation lives or dies by what the neighbor says at the mailbox.
Rooted in Toms River
This branch opened in 2014, and we’ve been sweeping from Pine Lake Park to Forked River ever since. We’ve worked on capes in Berkeley, ranch homes in Manchester, and the brick colonials off Hooper Avenue where the wind whips across the river itself. Russell lives in Beachwood, shops at the same stores you do, and knows which Lacey neighborhoods see the worst crown deterioration from salt air off the bay. We’re not passing through. We’re planted here.
Written by Russell Haines, Owner at Hearthstone Chimney Co., serving Toms River since 2014.