How Hearthstone Chimney Co. of Orlando Was Born in Orlando
It was a Tuesday morning in late October, the kind of day in Orlando where the humidity finally breaks and you remember why people moved here in the first place. We’d been sweeping chimneys for another outfit, running calls from Winter Park to Pine Hills, and something had been eating at us for months. A woman in Belle Isle, maybe seventy years old, living in the house her husband built before he passed, had called us out because her fireplace was smoking back into the room. The company we worked for quoted her fourteen hundred dollars for a “complete rebuild” that she couldn’t afford and didn’t need. We looked up her flue with a flashlight and found a cracked clay liner, yes, but one that a stainless steel insert from a reputable supplier would solve for a fraction of that cost. When we mentioned this to our supervisor, he told us to mind our own business and stick to the ticket.
We drove back down Orange Blossom Trail that afternoon with the windows down, smelling the orange groves that were still hanging on back then, and made a decision. Orlando deserved better than scare tactics and inflated bills from people who’d never have to see these homeowners again. Within six months, we’d hung our own shingle as the local branch of Hearthstone Chimney Co., bringing the parent brand’s standards to a market that needed them. That woman in Belle Isle became one of our first calls under our own name. We installed an Olympia Chimney liner, charged her fairly, and she referred her sister in Azalea Park, who referred her neighbor in Conway. That’s how we’ve built this branch, one honest job at a time.
Our Founder’s Personal Connection to the Chimney Cleaning Trade
People ask how we ended up in chimneys, of all things. The truth is, we started by falling in love with the problem-solving of it, then stayed for the people.
Our training came from a tradesman who’d been sweeping since the seventies, back when Orlando was still half-citrus groves and the idea of a “chimney sweep” conjured Mary Poppins instead of a certified technician with a camera rig. He was particular about his brushes, particular about his mortar mixes, particular about how you left a customer’s house cleaner than you found it. We spent two years riding shotgun in a van that smelled permanently of soot and creosote, learning to read a flue the way a carpenter reads grain in wood. The first time we sent a camera up a chimney and saw the cracked liner that was making a family sick every winter, something clicked. This wasn’t maintenance. This was detective work with real stakes.
What gets us out of bed now, forty-two years later, is the same thing. A call comes in from Sky Lake or Fairview Shores or out by Union Park. A homeowner who’s been told three different things by three different companies. They’re confused, maybe a little scared, definitely tired of being sold to. We show up with our camera, our lights, our plain English. We show them what we see. Sometimes it’s bad news and we have to deliver it straight. Sometimes it’s a simple fix and their relief is palpable. Either way, they know where they stand when we leave.
If we weren’t doing this, we’d probably be fixing old houses somewhere, restoring something that someone else gave up on. There’s a satisfaction in repair that new construction can’t touch. Every chimney we save from rebuild territory, every liner we install that buys a homeowner another decade, every firebox we repoint instead of replace - that’s the work. The smell of wet mortar on a Saturday morning, the sound of a brush catching properly in a flue, the sight of a clean inspection report on a camera screen. These are the sensory memories that stack up over four decades. Orlando’s humidity is hard on masonry. The summer rains find every crack. Knowing how this specific climate attacks these specific chimneys - that’s not in a manual. That’s lived experience.
Meet Our Team - The Person Behind Every Job
Owner & Founder, Hearthstone Chimney Co. of Orlando
We’ve been the hands on every major job this branch has done since we opened here. Forty-two years in the trade means we’ve swept chimneys in bungalows off Mills Avenue in Winter Park, inspected flues in mid-century ranch houses in Pine Castle, and rebuilt fireboxes in historic homes near Lake Conway. Our training runs through the National Fireplace Institute and CSIA certification paths, with continuous education on new liner systems and evolving venting standards. We specify Famco and DuraFlex products when the job calls for them, not because of any partnership, but because we’ve seen them hold up in Orlando’s punishing heat cycles.
What separates us from a franchise technician running a script is simple: we own the outcome. Every callback comes to us. Every warranty call is our time, our money, our name. When we’re not on a roof, we’re usually in our workshop restoring vintage hand tools or fishing the St. Johns River near Oak Ridge. The patience that fishing requires - reading the water, waiting for the right moment, not forcing it - is the same patience we bring to a stubborn smoke chamber or a tricky liner pull. Our commitment to you is direct: when we say we’ll be there, we’ll be there. When we say it’s fixed, we stand behind it.
Our Promise to Orlando Homeowners
Our values aren’t framed on a wall. They’re settled in our bones after four decades of doing this work.
Krafted right. We use trained journeymen, proper materials, no shortcuts. Early in our Orlando branch, we took over a job in Pine Hills where a competitor had used a cheap flex liner not rated for the appliance it served. The homeowner had paid good money for a “professional” installation. We pulled it, started over with the right DuraFlex specification, and absorbed the cost ourselves. That was expensive. It was also the right thing, and it’s why we still check every liner rating against the appliance manual, every time.
Every time. The four hundredth inspection gets the care of the first. We’ve caught ourselves getting casual on a familiar house type, caught it, and corrected it. Complacency is how mistakes happen.
Your home first. We work in your house the way we’d work in our mother’s. Drop cloths, shoe covers, vacuuming the hearth before we leave. A homeowner in Orlovista once told us we were the first trade in twenty years who didn’t track soot through her kitchen. That shouldn’t be remarkable.
Standing behind it. The Keystone Standard, applied to chimneys: ninety days, in writing, no arguing. If it’s not right, we come back. No paperwork battle, no voicemail tag. We’ve honored this on jobs where we could have argued the issue was unrelated. A square deal means a square deal.
Our Credentials
- State-licensed chimney contractor in Florida
- Insured & bonded for residential and commercial work
- 42+ years of hands-on experience in the chimney cleaning and repair trade
- Strong local reputation built across Orlando and surrounding communities through consistent, documented work
These credentials matter because a chimney technician works inside your home, on your roof, and in your flue - spaces you can’t easily supervise. State licensing means we’ve met Florida’s standards for competency and accountability. Insurance and bonding protect your property if something goes wrong, not just your chimney but your floors, your walls, your peace of mind. Forty-two years means we’ve seen the failure modes, the corner-cutting, the cheap materials that fail in Orlando’s climate, and we’ve learned to do it the way that lasts. Our reputation in neighborhoods from Azalea Park to Winter Park is earned one appointment at a time, documented with photos you can see and explanations you can understand.
Rooted in Orlando
We’ve swept chimneys in Conway homes built in the fifties, inspected flues in Fairview Shores ranches, and repointed fireboxes in Oak Ridge bungalows that have seen forty Florida summers. The orange blossom season still catches us off guard some mornings, driving through Pine Hills with the windows down. We hire local apprentices and train them into journeymen because this trade deserves to survive here, not get outsourced to the lowest bidder. When you call (877) 565-7563, you’ll reach a live coordinator who knows our schedule and our service area, Monday through Sunday, 7:00 AM to 7:30 PM. They’ll connect you with our local team, and we’ll show up when we say, camera in hand, ready to show you exactly what your chimney needs.
Written by the team at Hearthstone Chimney Co. of Orlando, serving Orlando, Conway, Fairview Shores, Azalea Park, Winter Park, Pine Castle, Pine Hills, Orlovista, Union Park, Belle Isle, Oak Ridge, and Sky Lake since 2014.