When Gabriel Viti designed a stone fireplace last year for his contemporary-style Highland Park home, his masons balked when he asked them to build it.
Viti wanted the fireplace outside, as part of the terrace. A restaurateur, he was thinking about outdoor entertaining space: a place to serve dinner or relax afterward, with cigars and cognac, toasty flames and a ceiling of stars.
The masons were probably thinking: “This is the Midwest, buddy. It snows here. A lot.”
“They thought I was crazy,” Viti said with a laugh during a tour of his back-yard patio, where today stands the fireplace constructed with the lannon stones he handpicked. “I just wanted to be able to sit outside in the fall and smoke a cigar.”
Viti’s hearth is part of a national trend catching fire in the Chicago area, where outdoor fireplaces are used to make back yards more agreeable by adding atmosphere and fending off chilly temperatures.
“I wanted to make the patio very livable, especially since we have to deal with so much cold weather here,” Viti said. “The fireplace really creates a great ambience, and it throws off a lot of heat.”
The burning interest in outdoor ingles, be they simple stone-ringed fire pits, Mexican clay chimineas, or high-end masonry models like Viti’s, is an extension of the ongoing “back yard as great room” movement, industry experts say.
The Hearth, Patio & Barbecue Association (HPBA), a trade group based in Arlington, Va., has not tracked outdoor fireplace sales because the phenomenon is too new, said John Crouch, the HPBA’s public affairs director.
But he said it is safe to estimate overall sales of the fireplaces in the millions, and there are no signs of the outdoor room trend subsiding as Baby Boomers reach their peak spending years.
“Over the last two years in particular, a number of things occurred which encouraged people to be very home-entertainment oriented,” Crouch said. “Once people see an outdoor room in a magazine, or visit a household that has an outdoor room with a fireplace, they start to get excited.”
Crouch said the fireplaces offer a way to stretch the use of outdoor rooms, an appealing selling point for residents here, who live with scorching summers, frigid winters, and all-too-brief springs and autumns.
“With the advent of air conditioning, in the hot weather a lot of people live in really tightly sealed houses,” said Crouch. “We want to get outside in the evening as soon as it is comfortable and before it gets too cold. An outdoor fireplace is a way to treasure the season.”
Manufacturers of portable outdoor fireplaces are scrambling to meet the demand. A plethora of styles, some costing less than $100, can be purchased through national retailers, including The Home Depot, Frank’s Nursery & Crafts and Ace Hardware.
The Hard-to-Find Tools (www.brookstone.com; 800-926-7000) catalog offers a “fire pit” in black-painted steel and wrought-iron for about $250. Plow & Hearth (www.plowhearth.com; 800-627-1712) sells a 5 1/2-foot-tall black galvanized steel version of a chiminea with a tall chimney and four screened sides for about $230. Gardeners Eden (800-822-9600) has in its catalog an open fire pit–a spun copper bowl with a metal grate on curled metal legs in its catalog for $158.
The selection is wide on the Internet, where myriad Web sites advertise small outdoor fireplaces. Susan Vrikkis is co-owner of Chiminea Express (www.chiminea.net), a 2 1/2-year-old Internet store based in Blowing Rock, N.C., specializing in traditional clay chimineas. (A chiminea, or chimenea in Spanish, is a gourd-shaped vessel with a short smokestack and a squat bowl with an opening for wood. The style originated centuries ago in Mexico, where the fireplaces were made of clay and used as bread ovens.)
Vrikkis said she has noticed steady growth in orders from the Chicago region for her dozen or so styles of chimineas, which average $215, including freight. They are handmade, sun-dried and kiln-dried by Mexican craftsman.
The popularity of chimineas and outdoor fireplaces in general may stem “way back to the caveman days, when they would all sit around a fire,” Vrikkis said. Clay chimineas, however, are for tiny fires, Vrikkis said. High heat may crack a chiminea, especially one mass-produced with inferior techniques.
“They are not made for big, roaring fires,” Vrikkis said. “You’re not going to heat your entire patio. They’re really more for atmosphere and for relaxing.”
Carrie Meade, design manager with Mariani Landscape in Lake Bluff, said her firm has seen requests for permanent outdoor fireplaces increase over the last three years and has installed the gamut, from a rustic fieldstone fire pit to a $20,000 fireplace-pizza oven combination.
But an outdoor fireplace can be as thrifty and effective as a pit dug in the back yard and ringed with a border of found stone or salvaged solid brick, Meade said.
The concept can also be elevated into an artful landscape focal point, she said. Mariani recently installed a cut-granite abstract sculpture with a central fire bowl for clients who wanted a fireplace to work as part of their outdoor modern art collection.
Before choosing an outdoor fireplace design, homeowners should first consider their house style, Meade said. “The house sets the stage,” she said. “The more formal and elaborate the house, the more formal and elaborate the fireplace.”
Homeowners should then think about how they entertain. “Maybe they want to extend the kitchen or family room, so the fireplace is built outside near a specific room,” Meade said, noting the fireplace should be situated so smoke does not blow into the house. “Or maybe they want to go in the opposite direction–maybe they want to feel they are out in the wilderness somewhere, so the fireplace is put in the back corner of the yard.”
“Fire adds a social atmosphere,” she added. “People have a tendency to gravitate towards it, the same way people tend to gather in the kitchen.”
Fire as a designated landscape feature is not a new idea. America’s great Prairie-style landscape designer Jens Jensen, for example, favored “council rings,” circular stone seating arranged in the Native American tradition around a central fire.
“Everyone sits at the same level, the fire illuminates all faces equally,” said Stephen Christy of Chicago, a landscape architect and Jensen authority. “The council ring is Jensen’s concept of equality.”
Christy said Jensen found something mystical in fire–he believed it held “the heat of many summers’ suns”–and intended his nature-inspired landscapes to be appreciated also at night under moon-, star-, and firelight. “There’s something soothing and mesmerizing about fire,” Christy said.
“[Jensen] had a good idea that’s been overlooked for decades. Maybe if more people turned off their TVs and sat around a fireplace outside, they’d be a lot better off.”
At Viti’s Highland Park home, the outdoor fireplace was built for about $25,000 and is in the manner of an indoor fireplace, with a firebox, hearth, and chimney. Its clean lines and stocky proportions lend a contemporary edge befitting the open, California-style ranch house and structured-yet-casual landscape by Mariani.
The fireplace sits to one side of an open-ended, bluestone-paved courtyard, within view of the home’s glass-door dining room and opposite a screened dining porch. Weather-resistant wicker seating and a glass-topped table are set in front of the hearth, though sometimes a long table is pulled there for dining. A mixed planting of tall grasses and tropical plants works as a clever “wall” to partially screen the sitting area from the swimming pool and rear gardens.
Viti, owner and chef at Gabriel’s Restaurant in Highwood, said the fireplace “was a big addition to the patio.” But with his long work hours, he wanted to come home to a place “that feels like a vacation spot,” he said.
“I’m entertaining at my house a lot more now that I have the fireplace,” Viti added. “People really seem to love it. Everybody who comes through the door remarks on it.”
As for the masons, “they still think I’m crazy,” Viti said. “This is a new thing for a lot of people.”
Fireplace safety tips
Outdoor fireplaces are currently allowed in Chicago and most suburbs, but some municipalities may forbid their use or require permits.
Terry Pluta, a vice president of Mt. Prospect-based Illinois Fire Safety Alliance, which teaches fire prevention, advises homeowners to check with their local fire departments before burning. He also said to take care when using the fireplaces. “Accidents don’t just happen,” Pluta said. “Most accidents are preventable. People need to use common sense.”
Other outdoor fireplace safety tips from the alliance:
– Read and follow manufacturers’ directions.
– Do not use on wooden decks and balconies, set on non-combustible surfaces such as concrete or stone.
– Be sure that the fireplace assembly will not topple. Any screens should be in good condition with no holes.
– Do not let children play near the fireplace, or leave children or pets unsupervised near it.
– Do not leave the fire unattended. Be sure the fire is extinguished before leaving the area.
– Do not burn on windy days, sparks can travel.
– Keep water, sand, or a fire extinguisher handy.
– Build fire away from overhanging branches, dry grass and leaves. Pile extra wood away from fire.
— Laurie Grano
