Over the years The Fireplace have been working alongside architects and designers, helping them understand the fundamentals and basic principles of fireplace design and installation in homes, restaurants, lodges and commercial buildings throughout New Zealand.

Taking a pro-active approach, The Fireplace Ltd have produced a reference guide called The Key Topics for Fireplace Designers.

The document is designed to assist architects and designers appreciate the key, basic main influencing factors associated with Solid Fuel and Gas fireplaces and their various configurations. Designers will always need to create variances within their designs to differentiate their clients wishes and desires for fireplaces. However, The Fireplace Ltd wish to ensure safe and compliant designs and installations, in helping architects and designers to achieve this.

This basic document covers three main key topics to help try and simplify the approach for any project where such fireplaces are specified.

These are:

• Materials — for common materials available on the New Zealand market used for the construction of fireplaces where non-combustible requirements are necessary.
• Air ventilation — for air replacement and also chimney chase/cavity venting — two distinctly different air requirements.
• Fluing requirements — for conventional flues (solid fuel and gas) and gas balanced flue systems.