The Valor LX2 — The Fire That Turns the Corner

A linear fire assumes a wall. It sits in a plane, faces one way, and asks the room to arrange itself in front of it. Most rooms oblige. Some do not: the open plan where the kitchen runs into the sitting room with nothing between them, the pier that carries a beam and not much else, the corner where two windows meet and there is no plane to speak of. For those rooms Valor took the L Series firebox we wrote about earlier and let the glass go round the corner.

The LX2 is that fire in two engine styles. The three-sided version is glazed on the front and both ends — a hundred and eighty degrees of fire that reads from three directions at once — and it is the model for a pier or a peninsula, a fire set into a spine wall between two spaces that gives both of them the same flame without giving either of them a wall. The corner version, built as a left-hand or a right-hand fire, keeps the front and one end; it takes the corner of a room, or the end of a run of cabinetry, and turns what is usually the dead end of a floor plan into the place people sit.

Because the glass wraps, the fire has to be composed for more than one point of view, and this is what the fuel beds are for. A bed of birch, driftwood or split logs looks like a fire from the front and like sculpture from the end. Murano glass or rock and shale, lit from beneath by a long run of flame, become a low field of light that reads the same from every side. Behind it, a fluted black liner recedes and lets the flame stand alone; reflective glass doubles it. Seen from the kitchen, the same fire is a different fireplace than it is from the sofa, and choosing the bed is choosing which of those two rooms gets the better view.

Everything the L Series is known for comes along unchanged. It is a radiant fire — no fan, no moving air, warmth thrown straight off the glass — and because the ignition runs from the batteries in the remote, it lights and keeps heating the room when the power is out. The Valor 10 remote is standard and will run the fire from a phone; a wall switch is in the box. Natural gas or propane, with up to 36,000 BTU on the top setting and a low burn of 19,000 for a mild evening.

What is different is that the HeatShift™ system is not optional here. Three panes of glass make a great deal of warmth, and Valor is honest about it: the LX2 is sold with the system that draws the hottest air off the top of the firebox and releases it higher up the pier, so the wall — and the television that so often ends up on it — stays cool. In the photograph at the top of this page, the slim dark slot above the screen is where that warmth leaves.

A multi-sided fire is the most demanding thing we install, and the most rewarding. A single-face fire forgives an inch; a fire glazed on three sides is squared to the room from every direction at once, and the pier it sits in is usually structural, usually carrying a beam, and usually finished in stone or tile that was chosen before anyone measured a firebox. The vent, the HeatShift™ route, the gas line and the framing have to be drawn together, and early. That is the work Maxwell Fireplace does in-house — helping you decide between three sides and a corner, and between a left-hand and a right-hand fire; choosing the bed and the liner for the views that matter; planning the vent and HeatShift™ runs with the framer before a stud goes up; pulling the permits; installing; and working with the trades who finish the pier so the fire and the stone are drawn as one thing. It is the fire we most enjoy seeing finished.