Spartherm Arte & Varia — The Fire as the Centre of the Room
Large-glass wood fireplaces from Spartherm — bay, peninsula, corner and see-through — drawn to stand at the centre of a plan. Certification is the question to ask first, and this page asks it.
Some fireplaces are chosen to heat a room; these are chosen to be looked at. Spartherm’s Arte and Varia are wide-glass wood fireplaces made for the kind of house where the fire is part of the plan rather than an afterthought to it, and between them they turn the glass in every direction a fire can face.
The Arte opens on three sides. The 3RL is a bay, its glass wrapping a front and two returns; the U is a peninsula, which Spartherm says shows the fire from more than three views, and which can stand at the end of a wall as a divider between a living room and a kitchen, as above. The Varia takes the glass round a corner in a long L, left-handed or right-handed — the 2L and the 2R — or sets one broad window into a wall, almost three feet across on the Bh, or lets a see-through, the B-FDh, show the same flames to two rooms at once, with one door that lifts to reload and one that hinges to clean the glass.
Now the question that comes before the drawings. In North America Spartherm lists the Arte and Varia as EPA exempt: decorative fireplaces, in its words, with an exemption from EPA testing, and none of the pages we have shows a North American emissions figure for them. In Metro Vancouver that matters, because Bylaw 1303 is written around certified appliances. Inside the Urban Containment Boundary a wood fireplace that does not meet the emissions standard can still be registered in two narrow cases: it is the home’s sole source of heat, or it burns nothing but manufactured firelogs, with no visible smoke. And from 15 May to 15 September no wood may be burned at all, certified or not, except where the appliance is the home’s sole source of heat. Outside the bylaw’s area the rules differ again.
So we would rather say it before the drawings than after the framing. For most homes in Metro Vancouver that want a real wood fire to heat a room, the answer is Spartherm’s certified range, the 600, 700 and 800. If it is the shape you are after — a fire seen from three sides across a room — a gas fireplace sits outside the wood bylaw altogether, and our Valor LX2 is drawn in just that form.
Look at Spartherm’s own pictures and notice how little of the picture is the fireplace. A black frame of glass and a fire; everything else is the house built around it — plaster, concrete-look panels, a niche for the logs, shelves — the work of the plasterer, the tiler and the joiner. That is the other thing to know about the Arte and Varia: they are fireplaces to be built into a design, and the design is as much the trades’ as the fireplace maker’s.
Arte 3RL-100h, bayVaria B-FDh, see-throughVaria Bh, single front
A black frame of glass, and the whole room arranged around it.
Check this first. Spartherm America lists the Arte and Varia as EPA exempt decorative fireplaces and shows no North American emissions figure for them. Metro Vancouver’s Bylaw 1303 is written around certified appliances, so whether one of these can be registered and burned at a given address is a question about the address. We confirm it with you, and with Metro Vancouver where it is needed, before anything is drawn. The certified Spartherm range has a page of its own.
This is why we plan these fireplaces rather than simply order them. Spartherm lists unit weights from 529 to 1,023 pounds and a flue 10 inches across on most of the family, so the floor, the chase and the roof line have to be settled before the first drawing, and a fireplace of this size only looks effortless once someone has done the arithmetic. That is the work Maxwell Fireplace does in-house: choosing the model and its view, measuring the floor and the flue run, pulling the permit and installing the fire with our own crew. The surround, the tile, the mantel and the plaster we plan together with the trades doing them — yours, or ones we bring in.
Images courtesy of Spartherm.
Questions people tend to ask
Can I burn wood in an Arte or Varia in Metro Vancouver?
That depends on the address, and it is the first thing we check. Spartherm America lists the Arte and Varia as EPA exempt and shows no North American emissions figure for them, while Bylaw 1303 is written around appliances certified to CSA B415.1 or the US EPA’s standard. Inside the Urban Containment Boundary a fireplace that does not meet it can still be registered if it is the home’s sole source of heat, or if it burns only manufactured firelogs with no visible smoke; and from 15 May to 15 September no wood may be burned at all, with narrow exceptions. Metro Vancouver decides any particular case. We would rather tell you before the drawings than after the framing.
Is there a certified Spartherm for a wood fire here?
Yes: the Spartherm 600, 700 and 800, which Spartherm lists as EPA approved, as masonry inserts, zero-clearance fireplaces and freestanding stoves. They have a page of their own, with the emissions figure Spartherm publishes.
Which Arte or Varia has which view?
The Arte 3RL is a bay, in three widths of front glass: 60, 80 and 100 centimetres. The Arte U is a peninsula in three sizes, the U-50, U-70 and U-90. The Varia 2L and 2R are corner fireplaces, left-handed and right-handed, in two widths; the B-FDh is a see-through; and the Bh, M-80h and M-100h set one broad window into a wall. Every one of them has a lift door.
How much heat do they give?
Spartherm publishes ranges from 19,000 to 33,500 BTU an hour for the smallest, the Arte 3RL-60h, up to 31,000 to 57,500 for the largest, the Arte U-90h, with efficiencies of 78 to 80 percent. Those efficiencies come from the European EN 13229 test, which is not the Canadian or American method and cannot be set beside their figures; they say what the fireplace does, not how it compares with a certified stove. We size a fire to the room, not to the top of its range.
What does one of these need from the house?
A good deal. Spartherm lists weights between 529 and 1,023 pounds, a 10-inch flue on most of the family (8-inch on the Varia M models) and logs of about 18 to 20 inches. The Varia M-80h can be connected to outside combustion air, and the Varia 2L and 2R can send warm air to other rooms through ducts. We measure the floor, the flue run and the clearances first, then handle the permit and the installation with our own crew.
Do you build the surround, the mantel or the tile?
No. The fireplace work is ours: design and placement, permitting, delivery, installation and the care afterwards. The surround, tile, mantel and millwork are planned together with the trades doing them — yours, or ones we bring in — so the fire and the wall are drawn as one thing.
Creative FireSpaces™
A fireplace is only half of it. The other half is who places it.
Maxwell Fireplace is North Vancouver’s Creative FireSpaces™ — and we stay involved in every part of the job. The fireplace itself is ours from the first conversation to the final flame: design and placement, permitting, delivery, installation, and the care that comes after. When the work runs to a surround, a mantel, tile or millwork, we plan it with the trades doing it — yours, or ones we bring in — so the fire and the wall are drawn as one thing rather than two. One point of contact, and nothing lost in the gap between trades.
It’s exactly why a fireplace like an Arte or a Varia belongs with us. A fire of this size only pays off if it was planned with the floor, the flue and the trades before the first frame went up, and checked against the bylaw before it was ordered — and that is the difference between an appliance and a centrepiece. We serve homeowners and contractors across Greater Vancouver, the North Shore, and the Sea to Sky Corridor — Squamish to Whistler and Pemberton — and we’d love to show you what’s possible for your room.
