Is Spartherm certified for a wood fire in Metro Vancouver?

The 600, 700 and 800 are Spartherm’s EPA-certified models, and EPA certification is one of the two standards Bylaw 1303 accepts. The Arte and Varia are listed as EPA exempt, so whether one can be burned depends on the address. We confirm the exact model and its certificate before anything is ordered. The two pages, 600, 700 and 800 and Arte and Varia, each say plainly where they stand.

Can I put a Spartherm into the fireplace I already have?

If it is a masonry fireplace, yes: the 600, 700 and 800 each come as a masonry insert, vented up the old chimney through a new liner. A wood insert belongs in a masonry fireplace whatever the brand. Where the wall is framed, or there is no fireplace at all, the zero-clearance version or the stove is the answer, and we look at the opening and the chimney before we recommend either.

Can I see one burning?

Not yet. Spartherm is new to us this month, and the first fire on the showroom floor is still to come. The pages carry Spartherm’s own photographs, and our other wood-burning stoves and fireplaces are lit in the showroom in North Vancouver, where we can talk through the size and the form your room wants.

Spartherm Comes to Maxwell Fireplace: German Wood Fireplaces, Inserts & Stoves in North Vancouver

There is a new name in the wood-burning part of our collection. Spartherm, a family firm from Melle in Lower Saxony, has been building fireplaces since 1986 and now makes about fifty thousand a year; its North American range is small, plainly drawn and, for the models that matter most here, certified. Two new pages say what it is.

One fire, built for either kind of wall

The heart of the range is the Spartherm 600, 700 and 800: one family of wood-burning fireboxes, a wide front glass in a plain black frame, each offered three ways. As a masonry insert it goes into the fireplace you already have and vents up the old chimney. As a zero-clearance fireplace it is framed into a wall that does not exist yet, on a listed chimney, with its combustion air drawn from outside. As a freestanding stove it stands in the room on a base of its own. Choose the size for the room, and the form for the wall.

They are the EPA-certified side of Spartherm’s range, and that is the sentence that matters in Metro Vancouver, where Bylaw 1303 asks for a certified appliance. Spartherm publishes the 800 at 1.3 grams of particulate an hour; for the 600 and 700 its papers give more than one figure, so we read the certificate for the exact unit before anything is ordered, and prepare the registration with the permit.

Spartherm 700 zero-clearance wood fireplace set flush in a white-washed timber wall, a log fire behind a wide black-framed glass, beside a dark grey sofa with snowy woods beyond the windows

The Arte and Varia, and the question to ask first

Spartherm’s other line is the one its photographs are famous for: the Arte and Varia, large-glass fireplaces that turn the fire toward the room from three sides, round a corner, or straight through a wall to the room beyond. They are drawn to stand at the centre of a plan, and the plaster, stone and joinery around them is as much the design as the fire is.

They are also listed by Spartherm as exempt from EPA testing, with no North American emissions figure, and we would rather say so before the drawings than after the framing. Inside Metro Vancouver’s urban area a fireplace that does not meet the emissions standard can be registered only in two narrow cases, and no wood may be burned from mid-May to mid-September. The page leads with that, and points a reader who wants heat to the certified series, and one who wants the shape to a three-sided gas fireplace, which sits outside the wood bylaw altogether.

Our part

A fire like this is decided at the wall. Whether the answer is an insert in an old hearth, a zero-clearance fireplace in a new one or a stove on the floor, the work of Maxwell Fireplace is the same: choosing the size and the form with you, measuring the opening or the framing and the flue run, pulling the permit, preparing the Bylaw 1303 registration, and installing the fire with our own crew. The surround, the tile and the mantel we plan together with the trades doing them, yours or ones we bring in. It is what we mean by a Creative FireSpace™.

Thinking about a wood fire this winter? Visit the showroom at 1380 Pemberton Ave, North Vancouver, Tuesday to Saturday, 10 am to 4 pm, or call 604-987-1293.

Spartherm Comes to Maxwell Fireplace — A German Wood Fire for the Wall You Have