Meet the Team - Hearthstone Chimney Co.

Meet the Falls Church Team Behind Hearthstone Chimney Co.

Our Falls Church crew shows up in the same trucks, wears the same uniforms, and answers the same live phone line that Russell Haines started answering back in 1984. What ties us together isn’t a handbook. It’s the K.E.Y.S. code we sign off on: Krafted right, Every time, Your home first, Standing behind it. Four people, four different jobs, one standard. Here’s who you’ll actually meet when you call (571) 489-4365.

Call (571) 489-4365

Our People

Russell Haines, Owner

I’m the one who started this whole thing in 1984, back when Falls Church was a different town and chimney sweeps still carried brushes that looked like they’d come off a Dickens set. Forty-two years later, I’m still climbing ladders when a job gets complicated, still answering calls at odd hours, and still writing the estimates myself when a homeowner wants to talk through what their camera inspection actually showed. I hold a CSIA Certified Chimney Sweep credential and a Virginia Class C contractor’s license, but the credential that matters most to me is the one I can’t frame: showing up in thirty years means I can’t afford to cut a corner today. My desk is covered in coffee rings and photos of chimneys I’ve fixed twice because someone else did it wrong the first time. I live in Fairfax County with my wife and two rescue dogs who have zero respect for my schedule.

Marcus T., Lead Technician

Marcus has been with us eleven years, which in this trade means he’s seen pretty much every way a chimney can fail in Northern Virginia’s freeze-thaw climate. He holds CSIA certification and specializes in Level-2 camera inspections, the kind where we run a camera up your flue and document every crack, every gap, every glazed creosote deposit that could turn into a chimney fire. Marcus is the technician who takes the photos, draws the diagram on the spot, and explains it like he’s talking to his own mother. He grew up in Arlington, still lives there with his partner and their overly ambitious vegetable garden, and has a running bet with the rest of the crew about which Falls Church neighborhood has the most squirrel-damaged chimney caps. His money’s on Jefferson Park. He’s usually right.

Elena V., Senior Installer

Elena handles our liner installs, crown rebuilds, and anything that involves scaffolding, which is most of the big jobs we book in Falls Church and the surrounding fourteen communities we serve. She came to us from a commercial HVAC background, brought her sheet-metal certification with her, and now she’s the person we send when a job requires custom-fabricated stainless steel from DuraFlex or a HeatShield cerfractory flue repair that has to cure just right in Virginia humidity. Seven years on our crew. She’s the one who notices if a brick pattern doesn’t match, if a mortar joint is a sixteenth off, if a cap overhangs wrong for our wind-driven rains. Off the clock, she restores vintage motorcycles and has strong opinions about which Falls Church coffee shop makes the best pour-over. She will tell you unprompted. We let her.

Darnell J., Service Coordinator

Darnell is the live voice you get when you call (571) 489-4365 at 10 PM on a Sunday because you smelled something odd from your fireplace. He’s been with us four years, knows our scheduling system like he built it, and has a genuine talent for calming down homeowners who just watched a YouTube video about chimney fires and are now convinced their house is forty minutes from combustion. He coordinates our four standing offers, the $50 off any repair over $250, the free second opinion on written estimates, the $89 seasonal tune-up, and the permanent 5% senior and veteran discount. No, he cannot combine them, and yes, he will explain why with patience. Darnell grew up in Woodbridge, commutes up I-66 every morning, and maintains an encyclopedic knowledge of which Falls Church streets have parking restrictions that affect our truck placement. This matters more than you’d think.

Chris P., Apprentice

Chris is in his second year with us, which means he’s past the stage of dropping tools down flues but not so experienced that he’s stopped asking questions we wish more veteran techs would ask. He’s working toward his CSIA certification, currently handles most of our standard chimney sweep and cleaning appointments, and shadows Marcus on every Level-2 inspection so he learns to document like an engineer and explain like a craftsman. Chris grew up in a house with a wood stove in Reston, watched his dad fight with that stove for fifteen years, and says that’s what made him want to learn how chimneys actually work. He brings a notebook to every job. He still writes in it. We’re not worried about him.

One Standard, Every Job

The K.E.Y.S. code isn’t a poster in our break room. It’s how we decide who’s ready to work solo, what counts as “done,” and whether a job gets the 90-Day Done Right Promise signature or gets redone first. Every technician on this page is background-checked, uniformed, and trained on the same professional-grade materials: DuraFlex, HeatShield, Gelco, Olympia Chimney, Famco, and Copperfield. No builder-grade substitutes, no exceptions. Most jobs wrap in a single visit because we’ve seen the problem before, we’ve got the part on the truck, and we don’t schedule more than we can finish properly. The pricing you get upfront is the pricing on the invoice. No surprises, no arguments, no paperwork chase if something needs a callback. In writing, no arguing. That’s the Keystone Standard Russell put in place in 1984, and it’s the standard every person on this crew upholds today in Falls Church.

Written by Russell Haines, Owner at Hearthstone Chimney Co., serving Falls Church since 1984.