I had a Travis Industries fireplace Extrordinair 4...

I had a Travis Industries fireplace Extrordinair 44 Elite installed when we had our house rebuilt about 5 years ago. We use it to heat or supplement the house furnace. A few comments for prospective buyers . .

1. Construction. The fireplace seems engineered and built well. It s gone through probably 20 or 25 cords of firewood over 5 years.

2. Customer service. Shortly after installation I asked the dealer what would happen if the blower failed during a burn . . Does the fireplace fail-safe? The dealer did not know . . So I asked them to find out from Travis BC I would like to know if there was anything I was suppose to do. After several weeks of trying to get an answer the dealer said it must be OK. Travis won t talk to end users directly (as of 5 years ago). So, I d have to give Travis a zero on customer service. That seems consistent with other comments I ve read.

3. Maintenance. The fireplace came with very few instructions. Eg1. No explanation of how the combustion air gets into the firebox so as to be sure the air flow doesn t get impeded by ash or tar and if it does, how to clean it. Eg2. No explanation of how often to clean the catalytic converter, or for that matter how to do so, and that in order to get it out and replace it you will need some fireproof firebox packing rope (3/4 ). Eventually one figures all this stuff out, but some guidance would have been helpful.

Keeping the glass doors clean (I don t think they are actually made out of glass). When running the fireplace in a oxygen throttled state, and especially if using less seasoned wood, the glass doors will tar up in a few hours. There are several effective ways to clean them. 3 or 4 scrapers work, but are not as effective as a good quality single edge razor blade scraper (I ve found that to work best). I buy the blades in bulk (100s - GEM seems to be a good brand, and I didn t know this, but the blades seem to have an up side and down side. Install the blades with the embossed/stamped name side facing upward, away from the glass ). Also, to really clean the glass, once the firebox is cool, one can use water and ashes. Dip a crumpled newspaper in a cup of water and then dip it in ashes. Then rub the glass and the tar will melt off . . If it s not too thick.

4. Use. It performs as well as I had expected, putting out enough BTU to keep 1200 sf of our home with a lot of windows and skylights comfortable down to about 20 degF. If comes with a wire mesh screen so one could theoretically have a fire with the glass doors open. The fireplace does not draw well enough to do that without getting smoke in the house.

Overall I like the fireplace

Don Fry