Town and Country TC36 Fireplace Story

This is a pic of my fireplace I took today! The lights are now working. Finally, after purchasing a TC36 seven months ago everything is perfect.  I will share all the lessons learned. Mistakes made are highlighted in red.  However, I would do this all again.

How we picked this unit:
After living in small house for a long time we could eventually build an living room addition. I knew that we wanted a fireplace as my wife and I had grown up with one and figured that this it would be a great time to add one  We both initially wanted a wood burning fireplace because gas didn't look nice as a wood, and wood was what we were used to. However, as soon as my wife saw the TC36 Town and Country model we both realized it looked good enough, if not better than a wood fireplace and that objection was easily overcome. Then once I realized the ease of operation of a gas unit I was further convinced gas was better. The real thing that swayed me to gas was when my mom started complaining about the wood fireplace fumes bothering her more as she got older, and that gas units with a closed glass had no air exchange at all. So gas was much more healthy. The TC36 model stood out above all the other units in the store due to its realism and quality. I figured that this was something I wanted to do right and was willing to spend on this unit. The salesperson told me it was the most expensive unit in the store. I think it ending up costing around $6500. The total of the entire fireplace project was around $10k, after installation, venting, gas, framing, tile and drywall work, and electrical. The heat and lighting and general atmosphere it creates, especially at night in a dimly light room is worth a lot more. My kids turns it on as they eat breakfast in the morning, and folks like to warm up against the the hot tiles and lean on them. There is zero air exchange with the room and no harmful gases are released into the room. A safety screen protects any fingers from being burnt against the hot almost invisible glass front.

So I bought the gas unit, put a deposit down, and it was to be delivered in a month or so. This was the first purchase I made  for the addition and they were only just laying down the foundation for the house at the time.  I went online to read the manual for the fireplace which was about 50 pages of complex measurements, setbacks, venting, placement, and guidelines. However, at this point you really needed to plan out the following to make sure to avoid issue. I did most of these but any one of them would cause major problems, as I later found out. I read the manual again when it arrived but still didn't understand everything well.  Buying the fireplace is the easy part, but getting it all working is a long process that involves, carpenters, HVAC technicians, gas installers, store personal for multiple visits, tile professionals, drywall installers, electricians, and painters. It became by far the most complicated part of the entire home addition. Here are all the stages in the fireplace process as they should happen.

Two Site Visits for Initial Planning
Initial planning site visit never occurred. The fireplace company did not offer one and they really should have, as they could have guided me better for room placement, venting openings between framing, platform construction, and let me know other things I might not know about. For new construction, this site visit should ideally occur just before any wall framing happens and as soon as the subfloor is in place. The fireplace is still on order at this point.

Here is when the first visit should have first occurred to decide on final placement and put markings on the floor to determine the joist spacing. This would have been a meeting between the fireplace folks and the contractor.

Ideally there would be a second meeting after framing was in place, but before the weight of the second floor was added, in case the widths or centering weren't correct. You can see me trying to approximate the as yet undelivered unit size and how it will look using boxes. I decided at this point not to have a bench in front but was thinking about it. The bench took up too much floor space. At this point the joists are incorrect for the fireplace but I don't know it yet.


Room Placement
Decide where the fireplace will go and if it goes between windows make sure you have enough clearance on the sides for the fireplace specs. Fireplaces need clearance around the unit on the sides for  safety, and then for framing, and then for mantels, so the fireplace can easily be twice as wide as the unit itself. Behind the fireplace it needs an air gap between it and the exterior wall as well. Draw all this out carefully and measure over and over to make sure you plan for this.

Fireplace Delivery
The fireplace gets delivered before an install date and then just sits around for a while.  It comes with a lot of boxes for vent piping, screens, logs, burners, and panels. It was a lot of stuff. It is important to protect the boxes and unit from construction dust and accidental bumping, as the panel, logs, and screen are fragile.

Platform
Although the fireplace can rest on the floor I wouldn't recommend it. Ideally when you sit on a sofa you want to look into the flames, not down on them. However, if the fireplace is too high you end up looking up into the top inside where you see the ugly venting opening. So my fireplace ending up resting on a platform five inches high after sitting around in a visit back to showroom trying to imagine me sitting on my sofa in front of the stores showroom model. I had to build this platform before the fireplace was delivered. The platform width needs to accommodate the fireplace, framing, and mantel as well so it will be very wide, and the depth needs to accommodate the setback, the fireplace depth, and work with the facing.  Take into account the height of floorboards on the floor that will raise the couch later on. A noncombustible board is also placed under the fireplace on the platform. These are all potential errors ranging from 1/4 to 4 or more inches.  Ideally the fireplace can get delivered on a first shot effort at a platform, and then the platform can be altered if needed, as it most likely will need to be. For example, I made the platform much deeper than need be and the fireplace would have jutted four inches further into the room. So I sawed off the rear of it as soon as I realized this major error. Why lose four inches of room? The fireplace weighs hundreds of pounds so the platform is basically almost solid wood mess of 2x4s and plywood all screwed and nailed together and is very sturdy.

You can see the wood for the platform here in home depot and sort of how it is constructed from an upside down view. I added three more supports between the long supports going perpendicular as well.

Placement of fireplace on platform
Once the fireplace is finally placed on the platform don't plan on moving much it at all. It is too heavy. Once the venting is attached you can't move it any more no matter what. The most important thing is that the fireplace is centered correctly, and is far enough away from the wall behind it. A third issue which I did know about was that the fireplace is usually not level. I am 100% certain my platform was totally level, but when the fireplace was placed on it the top of the unit leaned into the room a half inch further than the bottom.  It was the way the fireplace was made and not something the installer did. I did not notice this until after the venting was on, and the wall was framed in, which was too late.  The eventual outcome of this error was something was not noticeable, except to me. Rather than make the tiling and wall around the fireplace perfectly straight, we had to align it with the offset of the fireplace opening. If we had made the tiling and wall straight it would have drawn attention to a half in gap at the top of the fireplace edge as being different than the bottom. It isn't as big a deal as it sounds.

I put a piece of noncombustible board under the fireplace where the metal studs and fireplace go, but left wood on the sides exposed where the wood framing would attach.

Having a separate visit for fireplace delivery and for venting install
For me, the fireplace delivery and venting install were done in one visit by the venting company. The venting company knew how to vent the fireplace, but they knew nothing about fireplace setbacks, placement, or fireplace leveling. All they cared about was that the fireplace was vented OK. There should have been an initial visit to deliver and place the fireplace, adjusting the platform and leveling if needed, and then another to install the venting.

Venting
The biggest single problem here is that the unit needs a large space between two joists to accommodate the large vent pipe to the exterior. I believe it was 18 or 19 inches, and addition the spacing also need to be centered exactly behind the unit. Do not think, as I did, that you can instead buy two 90 degree elbows and figure out how to angle the vent to reach a non centered opening. Each turn uses up two feet of space, which makes it impossible to jerry rig something to reach an opening after the joists are in place. I wish I had known this from the start and it would have taken a minute to tell the contractor to leave an 19 inch gap exactly between two joists centered on the wall exactly between two windows six feet to either side. The venting guy ended up making 45 degree angled turns to reach a nearby opening that was just wide enough but off center. I barely had the clearance to get the pipe aesthicaly placed so my upper mantel enclosure looked good.

Venting starting out..

Venting is clearly not going to make the turn and will miss the hole ... the guy wasn't talking much and thinking about how he was going to fix this mess.

Ok try to at least install the target exit vent...

That creative solution worked!  

It is pretty clear that I can still frame around this - I don't have much choice either way.

Permit
Eventually there will be a fireplace inspection where they city or county comes out and looks at the fireplace unit to see it is vented properly, etc. The area where I live needed both a series of license numbers (havoc, mechanical I think) to submit into a city computer in order to check if they were valid. The company had a lot of trouble figuring out what numbers were needed and also getting in touch with their one guy was was licensed with the correct numbers. I never did find out if they had valid numbers or not as they kept giving me new incorrect ones or the same incorrect ones, and the city kept telling me that the licenses were not valid. Everyone on both sides, city and fireplace company, swore they knew what they were doing. I was stuck in the middle and the clock was ticking since the contractor had jobs lined up and the project would stall. I had to reach out to a third licensed company to get a valid number, and got the permit so as not to delay the construction process completely. The bottom line is that before you give any fireplace company any money at all, get their license numbers and get a permit from your city first. I had faith that the fireplace company was fine, but this issue ended up costing me a huge about of stress and hundreds of dollars to 'purchase' another companies license numbers. The was by far the largest issue I had in my entire home construction process.

Framing
Once the fireplace is in place, and after the venting is done, you frame the walls around it. I decided to take this on myself rather than have my contractor do it. There wasn't any real danger as it isn't supporting any loads. I actually did this myself on a Sunday for about seven hours and spent about $200 on lumber at Home Depot. I constructed a box around the bottom portion, attached it to the platform, and then made a narrower and shallower, but taller box around the top vent area going up to the nine foot ceiling. I made sure to put in lots of screws and made it very strong. The bottom box as a six inch wide top on both of the sides and about a one inch deep lip on the front. That is the difference is size between the top and the bottom. The cool thing about having two sections was that this allowed me to adjust for the placement of the front wall as a separate piece, to allow for tile depth errors and alignment with the lower fireplace frame.

Electrical and Gas
From the start I knew that the unit needed both electrical and gas to it.  The gas and electrical attach to the right side of the unit so I had my contractor bring the lines to that area. I made it simple for my contractor and placed the the on.off.remote switch on the right side of the unit as well. He put the entire thing on its own circuit. Here is the gas line.

Drywall, Non Combustable Board, and Tiling
My contractor placed drywall around the while thing and on the front lower section put an entire two sheets on noncombustable board. He had to tilt this board and shim it to align it with the fireplace frame which was tilting slightly into the room (see the error above as to how this happened). The tile guy then put tile around the fireplace, eight inches on the sides, and sixteen on the top, well within the limits from the specs for tile bordering. I chose nice Italian marble 2 by eight beige tiles and it looked great with the brown herringbone pattern of the fireplace interior. The tile store professional was excellent in recommending this tile. I hand sealed it all myself and he also chose the perfect grout color.

Room lighting
I didn't know how I wanted to light the fireplace but knew I wanted to have some options later. Therefore I placed an outlet facing up and flat on top of the lip of the left and right side on top of the bottom section so you can't see them from in the room. I figured that later on I could plug in a  small candle or lamp on either side, as I saw some lighting that did this. I also placed two small eyeball directional ceiling lights a foot or so in front on the fireplace where their own dimmer to illuminate the top section of the enclosure. At a low level at night these cast a nice light pattern onto the side of the enclosure. The rest of the room has can lights placed on the ceiling on a different dimmer switch.

Here is the final placement of the two eyeball ceiling lights.

On the top sides there is an upward facing outlet to plug in a light if we decide that later. We didn't want to install a permanent light fixture because we couldn't make up our minds. You can't see this outlet from the room.

I planned to leave a small eight inch square hole for gas line access, and covered this up with an easily removable white vent square cover. You can see that in the pic farther down. It is on the right below the control panel.

Wall Control Unit and iPhone Control
I placed the fireplace switch near the top of the lower section area on the right side, so a small child couldn't reach it to turn it on. A five year old might but a toddler could not. The remote control talks to this unit.  I knew from the start that there is an iPhone app called "TC Fire" that you can use instead of the remote control.  What I did not know is that this wall control switch box needs to have a wired internet connection, but only if you later plan to use the app. There is a red taped connection for it. Of course I didn't plan for this and so did not go to the trouble of placing a hard internet wire across my whole house just for this. I am not sure I would have done in retrospect had I known anyway, but for folks who are wiring their house be aware that this feature needs a internet wire going to it.


Mantel
I plan to build a soft colored stained wood mantel at some point but haven't gotten to it yet. The setup looks good enough without one that I might not do it though. This can be done at a later stage and the dimensions were planned to allow for one to fit well.

Final Installation of logs and panels
The final install included the fireplace folks placing the including herringbone panels, logs, and cinders, and adjusting the gas and burners. They did a good job with this but the panels are easily broken and he logs are easily chipped. All are made of fiberglass with special fire paint. You really can't repair any of these yourself if they get damaged. None of the boxes were damaged from shipping, but one bottom panel broke when the installer opened it, and two more (the side panels) cracked as he installed them. They barely fit and fit tightly so you can't force them at all or they will break. I think two of the logs got dinged, and the large center log had a chunk fall off it a week after the install. I had the company order new logs and panels free of charge and they replaced all of these. However, I think this is very common (the installer told something almost always break, and to my surprise he said often the customer doesn't care). It took three months to get new logs as they were backordered.  I could still use the fireplace and the cosmetic defects were small so this didn't bother me since I knew it would get fixed eventually.

Here are the logs, burners, and panels getting installed:

Some logs were damaged and one it was so bad a chunk fell off. You can see the chuck below under the grate. It was eventually replaced under warranty.

Remote Programming and Operation
The remote that comes with this thing is pretty neat, although mine was not programmed correctly from the factory. It wasn't defective, it just wasn't programmed right. Even if you sync it with a pin to the wall unit it still only partially worked. It could turn the fire on and off but that was about it. The lights (I didn't even notice they were there until I looked very carefully underneath) would turn on, the flame height was not adjustable, and the thermostat function didn't work. It was basically useless out of the box.  The installer had to look in a special book (not the one I got) for the thermostat and fighting initial programming configuration, and had to call TC to get the steps to program the unit to adjust flame height. Once programmed he assured me it was always be OK. The unit does seem to do all the functions correctly now: on/off, fire or light mode, flame height or temperature mode. It took several visits to get this all worked out.  T and C should really publish this info somewhere. Some is in the book but not all.  For your reading convenience, here are the operation and programming steps:

There are five buttons on the black remote. We will call the top button B1 and the bottom B5. Here are my names for each:
B1 - power (has a circle with a vertical line on it)
B2 - flame thermostat (has a temp gage on it)
B3 - the up arrow button on the circle
B4 - the down arrow button on the circle
B5 - fire or light mode (has a circle on it)

To turn the entire fireplace, lights, gas, and all on or off:
click B1 - when off only the room temperature is shown in the upper right

To change the remote to control light or fire:
click B5 - the fire icon is on if you are in fire mode and the light icon is on if you are in light mode

To change between flame or temp, or smart mode:
click B2 - the temp gage will toggle between flame, temp on, or smart mode, when in temp on or smart mode you see a desired room temperature appear, when in fire mode you see a flame height of a bar, off, or hi shown. I believe smart mode will adjust the flame  to meet the desired room temp. I believe on mode simply shows you the room temp that you are thinking of moving the fire to -I don't think it does anything.

To change the flame height, light intensity, or desired room temperature:
change to the mode above then click B3 to increase of B4 to decrease

Note - The smart mode is kinda neat. When the desired temp is reached the fire cuts off. If the room cools below the desired temp it comes back on.

Here is how to program the remote if the function above don't work:

To make the flame height function work (it never appeared on the remote until this was done):
Hold B1 and B5 at the same time (keep holding until told otherwise)
Remove any battery, then put it back in
(You should still be holding down B1 and B5)
Keep holding B1 and let go of B5
While still holding B1, click B3

To get the thermostat feature to work:
Hold B2
While holding B2, remove the middle battery and then put it back in

To get the lights to work:
This required the installed to push a button on the panel inside the fireplace, I am not sure which.