How Hearthstone Chimney Co. Was Born in Attleboro
Back in 2014, we were working as a sweep for another outfit when a call came in from a homeowner in Attleboro’s Hebronville section. The woman had been quoted fourteen hundred dollars for a “dangerous liner replacement” by a company that had spent twenty minutes in her basement and never run a camera up her flue. We went out on our own time, ran a level-2 inspection with a Chim-Scan, and found ordinary glaze creosote and a perfectly sound clay liner. Two hundred and forty dollars later, she had a clean, safe chimney and a photo report she could show her insurance agent.
That night, we called the parent company and asked about bringing Hearthstone Chimney Co. to Attleboro. The market was flooded with sweeps who sold fear first and fixed little. We promised to do it different: show the homeowner what we saw, name the problem in plain English, and charge a square deal for honest work. Twelve years later, that promise still governs every job we run in Bristol County.
Russell Haines’s Personal Connection to the Chimney Cleaning Trade
We didn’t grow up in a family of sweeps. We started as a carpenter’s helper, framing additions around Attleboro and Mansfield, and the chimneys were just the things we worked around. Then one January, a general contractor asked us to help rebuild a firebox in a 1920s Cape on County Street. The mortar was powder. The damper had rusted through. A family had been burning fires two feet from a collapsed flue lining they didn’t know existed.
We spent three days in that smoke chamber, learning how heat moves, how creosote hardens into glaze, how a chimney that looks fine from the hearth can be a shell inside. The smell of old soot and lime mortar got into our clothes and stayed there for a week. We didn’t wash that jacket right away. We wanted to remember what was hidden inside walls that people trusted.
That was over a decade ago. Since then, we’ve trained under a certified master sweep who taught us to read a flue the way a physician reads an X-ray: the hairline crack that opens under heat stress, the telltale white efflorescence that means water’s found a path, the thin blue smoke that signals incomplete combustion and carbon monoxide risk. We’ve crawled through attics in North Attleborough where the clearance to combustibles was measured in fractions of an inch. We’ve pulled raccoon nests from unused flues in Cumberland Hill and found bird skeletons in caps that hadn’t been inspected since the Reagan administration.
This work means something personal because the hearth is where people gather. It’s where a grandfather teaches a grandchild to build a kindling teepee. It’s where a couple on Pleasant Street warms their kitchen through a February ice storm when the power’s out. If we weren’t doing this, we’d probably still be swinging a hammer somewhere, but we’d miss the part where we hand a homeowner their inspection photos and watch them understand their own house for the first time. That never gets old.
Meet Russell Haines - The Person Behind Every Job
Russell Haines is the Owner and Founder of Hearthstone Chimney Co. in Attleboro. He’s a state-licensed sweep with level-2 inspection certification and twelve years of hands-on experience in masonry repair, flue relining, and solid-fuel appliance installation. Russell doesn’t manage from an office. He carries a brush, runs the camera, and signs every inspection report that leaves this branch.
What separates Russell from a franchise technician sent from a dispatch center is simple: he’s the same person who answers your questions before the job, performs the work, and stands behind it afterward. He’s also the person who spends Sunday mornings restoring vintage hand tools in his garage, a habit that speaks to how he approaches chimney work - patient, methodical, unwilling to force a solution that doesn’t fit.
Our commitment to you is direct: Russell Haines personally reviews every level-2 inspection report before it reaches your inbox, and he’s reachable if something doesn’t feel right.
Our Promise to Attleboro Homeowners
Our values aren’t framed on a wall. We call them K.E.Y.S., and we use them like a checklist before we pack up our gear.
Krafted right. We use proper materials - Gelco stainless liners where they’re warranted, Olympia Chimney components for factory-built rebuilds - and we train our people like journeymen, not button-pushers. No shortcuts past a smoke shelf, no guessing at clearances.
Every time. The 400th flue we sweep this year gets the same brush pressure and camera attention as the first. Complacency is how misses happen. We don’t get complacent.
Your home first. We lay drop cloths from the truck to the hearth. We wear boot covers. We explain what we’re doing before we do it, because it’s your house and you live in it.
Standing behind it. The Keystone Standard: ninety days, in writing, no arguing. If we missed something, we come back. No paperwork battle, no transfer to a warranty department.
Honest pricing means a free written estimate before any work begins. No surprises on the bill. We’ll be there when we say.
Our Credentials
- State-licensed chimney sweep and inspector, holding all licenses required by Massachusetts for work performed in your home
- Insured & bonded for residential property and liability coverage
- Years of local experience serving Attleboro and surrounding communities since this branch opened
- Strong local reputation built on repeat customers and word-of-mouth referrals throughout Bristol County
Here’s why these matter when you’re hiring someone to climb your roof and enter your living space. State licensing means we’ve met the training and examination standards that Massachusetts sets for this trade, not just declared ourselves experts. Insurance and bonding protect your property if the unexpected happens - a ladder slip, a masonry mishap, a soot release during cleaning. Local experience means we know which Attleboro neighborhoods have the unlined chimneys from the 1950s building boom, which ones sit in wind patterns that accelerate cap corrosion, and which building inspectors ask for what documentation. A strong local reputation is the only marketing we trust, because it means our neighbors have already vetted us.
Every pro working under our name is required to hold the license and insurance their state requires. We document every inspection with photos you can see and a plain-English verdict you can understand.
Rooted in Attleboro
This branch opened to serve a specific patch of ground: Attleboro, Mansfield, North Attleborough, and the Rhode Island line communities like Cumberland and Woonsocket where families live in houses built before World War II. We know the Hebronville triple-deckers with their shared flues, the Capron Park cottages with original brickwork, the split-levels off Route 1 that got factory-built fireplaces in the 1970s and haven’t been inspected since. We’ve swept chimneys before the Attleboro Farmers’ Market opens in June and after the December lights come down on Park Street. We’re not passing through. We’re planning to be the sweep your grandchildren call when they inherit the house.
Written by Russell Haines, Owner at Hearthstone Chimney Co., serving Attleboro since 2014.