How Hearthstone Chimney Co. of San Francisco Was Born in San Francisco
It was a Tuesday morning in November 1984, and we were standing in a living room on 34th Avenue in the Sunset District, watching a man in his seventies write a check for $847 to a chimney company that had just told him his flue was “unsalvageable.” We’d been called in for a second opinion by his daughter, who’d found us in the phone book under “Chimney Cleaning” and liked that we answered on the second ring.
We climbed that roof with a flashlight and a hand mirror. Took us twelve minutes to find the problem: a cracked chimney crown letting water seep behind the flue tiles, causing what looked like catastrophic failure from below but was, in fact, a $180 repair. The other company had quoted him for a complete rebuild he didn’t need.
That afternoon, driving back across San Francisco with the check still warm in our pocket, we made a decision. The chimney trade in this city was broken. Too many outfits sending salesmen instead of sweeps, quoting replacement when repair would do, treating San Francisco’s old masonry like a revenue stream instead of a responsibility. We started Hearthstone the following month with $400 in tools and a rule written on a 3×5 card: every customer gets the same answer we’d give our own mother. No exceptions. That card is still taped inside our truck’s glovebox, sun-faded and coffee-stained, forty years later.
Our Founder’s Personal Connection to the Chimney Cleaning Trade
We didn’t stumble into chimney work. We were pulled into it, the way some people are pulled into water or into music, by something that felt like gravity.
Our grandfather was a stonemason in County Cork who built hearths you could still warm your hands on a century later. He used to say the hearthstone was the stone the whole home gathered around, and that a man who built one poorly had failed at something sacred. We were twelve when we first mixed mortar for him, standing on a milk crate, the lime dust sticking to our forearms, the smell of wet stone and peat smoke in our clothes. He didn’t teach us technique so much as patience. “The chimney breathes,” he’d say. “You don’t force it. You listen to where it’s struggling.”
When we came to San Francisco in our early twenties, we worked construction, then roofing, then a brief, miserable stint in an office where the fluorescent lights made our head ache. A neighbor in the Mission District asked us to look at her chimney, which was drawing poorly and filling her flat with smoke every time she lit a fire. We found a bird’s nest compacted above the smoke shelf, six inches of packed twigs and soot that three other companies had missed because they’d never climbed past the damper. She made us coffee afterward, real coffee in a chipped enamel pot, and sat with us while the fog rolled in through her kitchen window. “You actually cared,” she said. “You took your time.”
That was the moment. Not the office, not the paycheck, not the credential. The feeling of solving something real for someone who’d been told it was unsolvable. Of working with our hands on something that mattered to a home.
We’ve been up thousands of San Francisco chimneys since then. Felt the salt air corroding metal flues in the Outer Richmond, seen the way earthquake settling cracks mortar in Noe Valley Victorians, smelled the particular mustiness of water intrusion in Visitacion Valley basements where the grade runs wrong. Every flue has its personality. Every firebox its history. If we weren’t doing this, we’d probably be restoring old stone buildings somewhere, working slower than the world wants, getting it right the second time because we got it right the first.
What gets us out of bed is the same thing that kept us up that first night in 1984: the knowledge that someone in this city is sitting in their living room right now, breathing smoke they shouldn’t be, or paying for work they don’t need, or simply wondering if the person they let onto their roof will tell them the truth. We get to be that truth. That’s not a job. That’s a responsibility we asked for.
Meet Our Team - The Person Behind Every Job
Marcus H. Delaney, Owner & Founder, Hearthstone Chimney Co. of San Francisco
Marcus started this company in 1984 after a decade of working construction and roofing across the Bay Area, learning masonry from journeymen in Daly City and South San Francisco who’d built chimneys for the post-war housing boom. He’s a Certified Chimney Professional with specialized training in level-2 camera inspections and historic masonry repair, though he’ll tell you the certification that matters most is the one earned by climbing the same steep San Francisco roofs for forty winters.
What separates Marcus from a franchise technician is simple: he’s the one who answers when you call, the one who shows up at your door, the one who writes the report you can actually understand. He keeps a small vegetable garden behind his home in the Richmond District, tends it the same way he tends chimneys, with attention most people would call excessive. On weekends, you’ll find him at the Alemany Farmers’ Market or walking the Lands End trails with his wife of thirty-two years.
“I don’t send anyone to your home I wouldn’t send to my mother’s,” Marcus says. “That’s not a slogan. That’s how I sleep at night.”
Our Promise to San Francisco Homeowners
Our values aren’t framed on a wall. They’re stamped on every invoice, every report, every handshake. We call them our K.E.Y.S.
Krafted right. We use Gelco and Olympia Chimney products because we’ve seen what happens when corners get cut on materials in San Francisco’s salt air. Every job gets a trained journeyman, not a trainee left unsupervised. We once spent four hours on a roof in the Mission District removing a competitor’s “repair” that had used standard mortar where high-temperature refractory was required. The homeowner paid twice. We don’t let that happen on our watch.
Every time. The 400th chimney we sweep this year gets the same flashlight-in-every-corner inspection as the first. Our camera doesn’t get tired. Neither do we.
Your home first. We wear boot covers without being asked. We lay drop cloths on your floors before we touch a tool. We work in your house the way we’d work in our mother’s, because we’ve been invited into something private, and that invitation is a trust.
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, no phone tag, no “let us check with the office.” We are the office.
Our Credentials
State-licensed - We carry all required California contractor licensing for chimney and fireplace work. No number games, no shortcuts around regulatory requirements.
Insured & bonded - Full coverage for every job site, because we’re working on your roof, in your home, around your family. You shouldn’t have to wonder what happens if something goes wrong.
Years of local experience - Four decades of climbing San Francisco chimneys, from the tight flues of Chinatown walk-ups to the triple-story masonry in Pacific Heights. We’ve seen what this city’s fog, salt, and seismic shifts do to brick and mortar over time.
Strong local reputation - Built one job at a time, one neighbor telling another, one homeowner calling us back for the third or fourth property they’ve owned. We don’t buy reviews. We earn calls.
Here’s why each credential matters when you’re hiring someone to work in your home: a state license means we’ve met California’s standards and can be held accountable to them. Insurance and bonding means your property is protected, not promised. Local experience means we know that a chimney in the Sunset fails differently than one in the Mission, and we adjust our inspection accordingly. And reputation, real reputation, means we have something to lose if we let you down. In a city full of transients and pop-up services, we’re betting our name on every job.
Rooted in San Francisco
We’ve swept chimneys in every neighborhood this city has, from the steep streets of Noe Valley to the flatlands of Visitacion Valley, from the Victorians of Alameda to the hillside homes of Sausalito and Tiburon. We’ve sponsored the Richmond District Neighborhood Center’s holiday food drive for fifteen years, and Marcus still shows up early to help unload trucks. Our apprentices come from City College and Laney College trades programs, not from out-of-state recruitment fairs. When you call us, you’re calling someone who knows why the N-Judah is delayed, who’s argued about the best burrito in the Mission, who’s watched the fog erase the Golden Gate Bridge a thousand times and still stops to look. We’re not a franchise. We’re not a platform. We’re a San Francisco company that plans to be here when your grandchildren need their chimneys swept.
Written by Marcus H. Delaney, Owner at Hearthstone Chimney Co. of San Francisco, serving San Francisco since 1984.