Hearth Installation and Remodel Work in Alpine

Remodeling around an existing box

The most common project here starts with a fireplace that works but looks like the decade it was built in. Brass trim, arched glass doors, a narrow marble surround and a mantel scaled for a room half the height it sits in. Alpine great rooms are tall, and a hearth sized for an eight-foot wall looks lost on a twenty-foot one.

The good news is that a lot of this is finish work over a sound appliance. Re-facing in stone, rebuilding the mantel to the room's proportions and raising the hearth line can change the room without touching the firebox. The constraint is clearance: manufactured fireplaces are listed with minimum distances from the opening to combustible trim and mantel, and those numbers do not become negotiable because the design would look better. We work to the label, and we tell you before drawings are made what the label will allow.

Putting an insert into a fireplace you already have

Retrofitting a gas or wood insert into an existing opening is the fastest way to turn a decorative fireplace into something that actually heats. It is also where corners get cut. An insert needs a correctly sized liner running the full height of the flue, connected and terminated properly, not simply slid into the opening with the old flue left oversized above it. On the tall Alpine stacks that means a long liner run, and that length is part of the honest quote rather than a surprise.

Termination height on a steep roof

New construction and relocations run into a rule worth understanding before the framing goes in. A chimney has to terminate at least three feet above the point where it passes through the roof, and at least two feet higher than anything within ten feet of it. Alpine's custom homes tend to have steep pitches, dormers and multiple roof planes, and on a steep pitch the roof surface itself is what sits within that ten-foot radius. The chimney gets taller. Designing for that early is much cheaper than discovering it after the chase is built and the fireplace will not draft.

What we ask before quoting

Fuel and purpose, first. A unit chosen to heat a lower level through a long winter is a different appliance from one chosen for the look of a flame in a great room, and they are not interchangeable. We would rather spend the first visit on that question than sell you the wrong box beautifully installed.