How Hearthstone Chimney Co. Was Born in Leesburg
We remember the exact afternoon. Late October, 2014. The air in Leesburg had that particular sharpness, the kind that makes you think about your fireplace before you’ve even flipped the calendar. A homeowner in the Belmont neighborhood had called three companies. Two never showed. The third sent someone who walked the roof for five minutes, declared the chimney “probably fine,” and handed her a bill for $280.
She called us next. Not because she knew us. Because she was angry and exhausted and cold.
We spent two hours on that job. Camera up the flue, photos of cracked flue tiles, a bird’s nest wedged above the smoke chamber. She watched the screen with us. She saw what we saw. When we finished, she sat at her kitchen table and cried. Not from relief, exactly. From the feeling of finally being told the truth.
That was the moment. We knew Leesburg needed something different. Not another company with a polished truck and a script. Someone who’d sit at the kitchen table and show you the problem. Someone who’d say “this can wait” when it could wait, and “this can’t” when it couldn’t. We brought Hearthstone Chimney Co. to Loudoun County because we couldn’t stand watching neighbors get treated like invoices. Twelve years later, that homeowner still calls us every September. Her granddaughter answers the phone now.
Russell Haines’s Personal Connection to the Chimney Cleaning Trade
Russell didn’t stumble into this work. He was pulled into it by the smell of creosote and the weight of a good brush rod.
Back in his early twenties, he helped a tradesman who trained him through a brutal winter in the Shenandoah Valley. The work was harder than anything he’d done. Carrying a chimney sweep’s vacuum up a narrow staircase. The grit that gets under your fingernails and stays for days. The first time he dropped a brush down a flue and felt it catch, then release, then catch again - that rhythm of contact, like the chimney was speaking back.
He was hooked by something unexpected. The peace of it. You’re on a roof at dawn, Sterling or Purcellville below you still waking up, and you’re doing work that matters in a way people don’t think about until it fails. A chimney that draws properly keeps a family warm. A chimney that doesn’t can fill a bedroom with carbon monoxide while everyone’s asleep. Russell felt that weight early. It never left him.
What gets him out of bed now, twelve years into this, isn’t the next job. It’s the repeat caller who says, “You told us three years ago this liner had maybe two seasons left. You were right. What’s next?” It’s being the person who remembers your flue, your roof pitch, the way your damper sticks in humid weather. If he weren’t doing this, he’d probably be restoring old stone houses somewhere, working with his hands, solving problems that take patience. He tried an office job once, early on. Lasted four months. The fluorescent lights made him restless.
The work means something personal because it’s tied to home in the oldest way. The hearthstone is the stone the whole home gathered around. Russell believes that literally. He’s sat with homeowners in Cascades and Great Falls and South Riding, looked at their fireplaces, and seen the same thing - the place where people cluster when the power goes out, where kids open presents, where someone sits alone with coffee on a Sunday morning. Keeping that safe isn’t maintenance. It’s care.
Meet Russell Haines - The Person Behind Every Job
Russell Haines, Owner & Founder of Hearthstone Chimney Co. in Leesburg.
Russell holds state licensure and has completed the training and field hours required for certified chimney sweep work, including level-2 inspection protocol and masonry evaluation. He’s worked with Olympia Chimney and DuraFlex systems in the field, and he’s particular about materials - Famco caps on his own roof, Copperfield tools in his truck. What separates him from a franchise technician sent from a dispatch board is simple: he’s the one who answers your questions, climbs your roof, and signs the report. He lives in Loudoun County. His kids go to school here. He’ll see you at the grocery store.
Outside of work, Russell restores vintage hand tools. Planes, chisels, things with wooden handles worn smooth by someone else’s grandfather. He says it teaches him patience that transfers directly to chimney work - you can’t rush mortar curing, and you can’t rush a flue inspection.
His commitment to every customer is direct: we’ll be there when we say, we’ll show you what we found, and we’ll never recommend work you don’t need.
Our Promise to Leesburg Homeowners
Our values have a name we use internally: K.E.Y.S.
Krafted right means trained journeymen, proper materials, no shortcuts. Russell once refused a job in Brambleton because the homeowner wanted a quick seal on a deteriorating crown. We explained why that would fail by February, wrote up the proper repair, and the homeowner called back the next fall to thank us. The easy money would have cost us both.
Every time means the 400th job gets the care of the first. Our camera inspection and photo report is included on every sweep, every time. No exceptions.
Your home first means we work in your house the way we’d work in our mother’s. Boot covers, drop cloths, vacuuming the hearth before we leave.
Standing behind it means The Keystone Standard: 90 days, in writing, no arguing. If it’s not right, we come back. No paperwork, no runaround.
Honest pricing means no surprises on the bill. Quality parts means we source from brands we trust - Olympia Chimney, DuraFlex, Famco, Copperfield - not whatever’s cheapest this quarter. Standing behind every job means our name on your invoice is a promise, not a formality.
Our Credentials
- State-licensed chimney sweep contractor
- Insured & bonded for residential work in Virginia
- Years of local experience serving Loudoun and Fairfax counties since 2014
- Strong local reputation built on repeat customers and neighbor-to-neighbor referrals
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. A homeowner in Herndon or Reston who lets someone into their home to work on a system that vents carbon monoxide needs to know who’s responsible if something goes wrong. Licensing means accountability. Insurance means you’re not left holding the bag. Bonding means the job gets finished even if circumstances change. We don’t think of these as selling points. We think of them as the minimum standard for entering your home.
Rooted in Leesburg
We’re not passing through. Russell lives here. Our service van knows the difference between the older homes near downtown Leesburg with their unlined brick chimneys and the newer construction in Brambleton where builder-grade stainless needs its first real inspection. We’ve worked on fireplaces in Berryville farmhouses and townhome stacks in Sterling. We’ve swept chimneys before the Leesburg Flower and Garden Festival and after ice storms when every flue in Cascades seemed to back up at once. This is our home too. We plan to be here in thirty years, answering the phone with a person, sending the same careful technician to the same careful jobs. A company that plans to stay acts like it.
Written by Russell Haines, Owner at Hearthstone Chimney Co., serving Leesburg since 2014.