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As custom outdoor living spaces evolve into
living rooms, homeowners now focus on a number of higher-end
masonry items to define their special areas. One of the hottest
is fireplaces (no pun intended). Demand is rising in a market
where from scratch fireplaces run up to $30,000+.
And because fireplaces are most popular in
climates where the winter chill can linger long and return
early, landscape designers don't have enough time to comfortably
fit these into already packed schedules.
Fortunately there are options to the metal
firebox that looked cheap and didn't always work well. Some
companies are offering kits that create the interior structure
of a fireplace and chimney in a few pieces ready to be covered
in the customer's choice of veneers.
And, there's even a newer chip off the ol'
flagstone that provides a complete fireplace, factory made and
ready to be placed on footers, that installs in only a couple of
hours and comes with an equally modest price.
Bill Harris has had first hand experience
with many of them. The managing partner of the Santa Ana,
California based Masonry Fireplace Industries (MFI) grew up in
the fireplace business. Back in the mid 1960's, his family made
precast concrete tilt-up fireplaces for tract homebuilders in
Southern California, and later got into manufacturing metal
fireplaces.
It was while he was selling the metal boxes
that the light bulb went on. "It's kind of a natural progression
for us to get into modular concrete fireplaces," he says. "I saw
this as a higher-end product going into more exclusive homes,
and I thought it had growth potential."
That's not to say MFI was the first to the
marketplace with its Mason-Lite product. Jacksonville, Florida
based Earthcore Industries, LLC has been importing the Danish
made Isokern Fireplace and Chimney System for almost two
decades, and already has more than 100,000 installed units
around the United States. To meet the growing demand, the
company has just started domestic production of modular
fireplaces at an automated production facility in Norfolk,
Virginia.
"This is really a superior product, and a
real step up from the traditional metal boxes," says Earthcore
founder Carl Spadaro, who serves as the company's CEO. "It's
made of pumice that's found in one location in Iceland, and the
composition is such that it provides a very good insulation. At
the same time it does not have the weight that concrete does."
Another early adapter is Joe Rider,
president of Collinsville, Oklahoma based Stone Age
Manufacturing. The son of a mason who grew up in the trade,
Rider says that from an early age, he and his brother were
called on to rough-in fireplaces by others who couldn't' build
them from scratch.
"We had a feeling that outdoor living would
become popular, and we felt if we had some kind of kit that was
complete and easy to put together we could sell it," says Rider.
"We came up with a design for outdoors, and we've been producing
fireplaces for about six years now."
Rider's faith in the outdoor market is such
that Stone Age has also developed kits for other outdoor
amenities, including fire pits, pizza ovens and kitchen islands.
However, his firm's emphasis on outdoor fireplaces from the
beginning is the exception, rather than the norm.
For instance, Harris says originally the
weight of his product had him focusing MFI on selling interior
fireplaces. However, market forces have taken the company
elsewhere.
"With internet feedback from our customers,
probably 90 percent of the inquiries were for outdoor use,"
Harris says. "We're seeing a big increase in outdoor living, so
we developed and tested footings for these that meet the
structural aspects of most jurisdictions."
"We recognized a trend in the market and
took our product outdoors," agrees Jeff Stevens, president of
Birmingham, Alabama based manufacturer Fire Rock and a former
Isokern distributor.
Spadaro feels Isokern has even helped fuel
the popularity for outdoor fireplaces by offering a superior
system. "People are saying, 'I'm going to invest in my patio and
I don't want to put something cheap on it,'" he says. "People
aren't willing to settle for a metal firebox anymore."
Regardless of how they came to the
outdoor market, these companies feel their products have some
real advantages in the market.
Certainly one is that because each fireplace
kit is the same, it can meet standards that the from scratch
ones can't. These products have been through UL (Underwriters
Laboratories) 127 testing standards for fireplaces; the testing
agency recently added a separate outdoor fireplace component.
"Because they're certified and UL-listed,
homeowners are more comfortable with them," Rider says. "It
doesn't matter who's putting it together; our units are going to
be consistent, and the documentation we have is a guarantee to
the person buying the fireplace."
Then, there's the durability of
construction - from a number of standpoints. "Over time, a
traditional masonry fireplace - because it has so many mortar
joints - mortar has to be replaced," says Spadaro. "Our box goes
together with a special adhesive, so long-term it's subject to
less maintenance."
Fire Rock's Stevens says much the same
thing. He compares it with an historic fireplace where the brick
and the mortar have different expansion and contraction rates.
"By contrast, our product is made from pumice and refractory
cement, and those materials don't absorb heat," he says. "It
isn't expanding and contracting so a component fireplace is much
more likely to be in place 100 years from now."
And, says MFI's Harris, these products are
further engineered for durability in ways that vary from mason
to mason and job to job among hand built fireplaces. "Obviously
we build with rebar and concrete to hold everything together,"
he says. "The structural components make it durable."
Durability may not be the biggest concern of
landscape contractors installing these, though. At least as
attractive is the way they're delivered and assembled. Harris
says often the biggest part of the process is digging and
pouring the foundation, which typically takes a yard of
concrete.
"Building the unit and putting firebrick in
it takes about five hours," he says. "We make firebrick panels
to make it even easier, and that's anaspect that's new to people
who haven't been using these kits yet."
"We like to think that if you can read a
bubble in a level and mix mud in a bucket, you can put up a Fire
Rock fireplace," says Stevens. It fits> together like a LEGO
kit, and at the end you have an empty pallet, or a piece left
and a hole in the fireplace. There's a real low-skill threshold
to put these together."
At the same time, these kits offer plenty of
unique decorating opportunities for the contractor who has a
mason skilled at applying different facades over the internal
structure. "The one of a kind look can come easily from the face
material." Says Stevens.
"The central component - the box and flue -
are the same from one installation to the next, but that doesn't
preclude the finish being done in any way someone wants," says
Earthcore's Spadaro. "If you look at how people have implemented
them and how architects have designed them, they're as varied as
you can possibly imagine."
And Spadaro adds, many clients see this as
an attractive alternative for one additional reason: cost.
"We're typically a little more than the metal box in a similar
application, and considerably less than a traditional masonry
fireplace," he says. "The cost is less, but they're going to
have less maintenance going forward."
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