Lopi

How Did Lopi Start?

With a drummer who thought he could build a better stove. In the mid-1970s, Kurt Rumens played drums and sold wood stoves for a living. On his way to California, he ran out of gas in Seattle, at a time when, in his words, “America was crazy for wood heat.”^[4] He thought the stoves he sold needed heavier steel, a more efficient burn, and better looks. When the maker he took his ideas to wasn't interested, he decided to build his own.^[6][5]

Rumens told the longer version on The Fire Time Podcast in 2026. Before Lopi, he drove his rock band's truck, delivering El Fuego wood stoves to dealers in Connecticut and Massachusetts. After he moved to Seattle, he sold Fuegos part-time and worked construction during the day. Within six months, he was already fixing them, so he sent his Fuego distributor a picture of an arch and a firebrick from a Glacier Bay stove as ideas to build in. The answer came back that he wasn't an engineer, or even a draftsman. Then, at a stove show in Portland, Oregon, he tried to buy stoves from the Nashua Stove Company. The owner asked how old he was (21) and how many dealers he had (nine), and told him to come back when he had more. Rumens calls that the moment he decided to become a stove manufacturer.^[1][2]

He started Lopi in 1979, in the garage of his home in Bellevue, Washington, with about $600.^[5][4][6] A profile published by Rich's for the Home, a Travis dealer, says his friend Dick Miller started the company with him, and that the first crew of six built eight stoves a week.^[6] A few months in, Rumens hauled the first Lopi, a 550-pound stove, to the Evergreen State Fair in Monroe, where it sold for $629. The first production line ran in a 9,000-square-foot warehouse in Kirkland.^[4] Rumens also remembers a small 10-by-14 storefront in Ballard, in Seattle, as the home of Lopi International.^[1]

The LOPI trademark was first filed in 1982 by Lopi International, Ltd., of Kirkland, Washington. It gives August 20, 1979, as the date of first use and February 1980 as the first use in commerce.^[8] Travis Industries' own LOPI registration, granted in 2005, claims the same dates.^[9]

How Do You Pronounce Lopi?

Low-pie. A 2014 Lopi brochure lists the ways people say it, “Lopey…Loopee…Loppy!”, then sets the record straight: “It's actually pronounced Low-pie.”^[10]

Rumens made the name up himself.^[6][4] The same brochure says it was inspired by a love of the Northwest, its nature and wildlife, and a fascination with Native American culture, and that Lopi means “beauty, strength and independence.”^[10] The Herald, in Everett, described it in 2025 as a “wolfish” sounding name that Rumens coined.^[4]

How Are Lopi and Travis Industries Related?

Travis Industries grew out of Lopi. In 1988, Rumens sold Lopi to Travis Garske, a businessman who owned a foundry in Spokane, Washington. Garske bought the Avalon stove company at the same time, and the two were joined under a new name: Travis Industries.^[5][6] Rumens was asked to stay on for two months and find a new president.^[4] He's still the president and general manager, 39 years later as of 2026.^[13][1] He has called the sale the best thing that ever happened to his business: Travis brought business discipline and know-how, not just money.^[3] Rumens says the Garske family has six generations in the foundry business that Travis Garske's grandfather started.^[1]

Travis now builds four brands. Lopi makes the wood, pellet, and gas stoves and fireplace inserts. Fireplace Xtrordinair makes gas and wood fireplaces, DaVinci makes custom gas fireplaces, and Fire Garden makes outdoor fire pits and lighting.^[13][12] The Avalon story has its own page: Avalon. From 1988 through 2024, Travis says it built 1,651,099 fireplaces, and it lists 800 dealers and distributors worldwide.^[13] The full Travis story is in our Fireplace Xtrordinair guide.

What Is NexGen-Hybrid, and How Does GreenStart Work?

NexGen-Hybrid is how today's Lopi wood stoves burn. It works in three stages. The fire heats the wood until it gives off gases and smoke, then preheated air comes in and ignites them, and whatever is left passes through a combustor above the baffle, where it burns again.^[15] Lopi says the system drafts like a non-catalytic stove but puts out heat like a catalytic one.^[15] It combines two earlier Lopi systems, Hybrid-Fyre and NexGen-Fyre.^[26]

Lopi's Cape Cod line used Hybrid-Fyre.^[30] The Cape Cod wood stove won two Vesta Awards in 2011, Best in Show for hearth products and the Green Award, then the People's Choice award in Popular Mechanics' Next Generation Woodstove Design Challenge in 2013.^[14][5] It has since left the lineup.^[40]

GreenStart is Lopi's push-button igniter. It heats air to 1,400 degrees Fahrenheit and a small compressor blows it into the firebox, like a blacksmith's bellows, so you light the wood with the door closed. Lopi says the fire catches in a few minutes and the whole cycle runs about 15 minutes.^[19] It's an option on Lopi wood stoves and on its inserts, except the Evergreen and Answer inserts.^[15] The Herald watched Rumens demonstrate GreenStart, then patent-pending, at the factory in 2013.^[5]

The steel stoves are formed on a 600-ton press, which Lopi says cuts down on welds, and their fireboxes are lined with kiln-fired refractory firebrick.^[11] Lopi says it tests every wood model with cord wood, split logs like the ones you burn at home,^[15] and the EPA lists their certifications on crib wood, the standard test fuel.^[20]

What About Lopi's Pellet and Gas Stoves?

AGP stands for “All Grades of Pellets.” The AGP's feed is built around a Horizontal Rotary Disc that meters pellets from the hopper to the auger. The upper and lower openings never line up, so there's no direct path between the fire and the hopper, and a horizontal auger carries the fine dust onto the burn platform with the pellets.^[16] Lopi's manual archive dates the first AGP stove to 2012 and the first AGP insert to 2013.^[40] The Deerfield, a cast-iron pellet stove, won the 2017 Vesta Award for Best New Pellet Product.^[14] Today's Deerfield II burns up to 35 hours and heats up to 2,500 square feet.^[33]

The gas stoves run on GreenSmart, a control system Lopi says is patented. Its remote sets the flame in six levels, runs a thermostat that turns the flame up and down instead of just on and off, and switches between an on-demand pilot and a continuous one. Comfort Control shuts off the rear burner for a turndown of up to 75 percent.^[18] A battery backup keeps the stoves running in a power outage.^[42] The GSR2 in a model name, like the Berkshire GSR2, is GreenSmart 2.^[34] The burner is Ember-Fyre, which won Popular Science's “Best of What's New” award in 2000.^[17][14][4]

The Radiant models need no electricity at all. The Radiant Plus gas inserts, in Medium and Large, come with a millivolt standing pilot (MV) or a GreenSmart Basic pilot (GSB), and give radiant heat plus natural convection.^[39] Lopi's manual archive dates its first Radiant gas inserts to 2015.^[40] The Berkshire Radiant is the no-power version of the Berkshire stove.^[35]

How Clean and Efficient Are Lopi Stoves?

We checked the EPA's certified wood heater database in November 2026. Every Lopi wood and pellet model listed there is marked as meeting the EPA's 2020 standard, at 0.73 to 1.8 grams of particulate emissions per hour, and 76 to 80 percent overall efficiency (HHV).^[20] The Rockport is the cleanest, at 0.73 grams per hour. The Liberty is listed at 0.9, the Endeavor and Evergreen at 1.2, and the Answer at 1.4.^[20]

That efficiency used to matter at tax time. From 2023 through 2025, the federal Energy Efficient Home Improvement Credit paid 30 percent of the cost of a wood or pellet stove, up to $2,000 a year, if it was rated at least 75 percent efficient (HHV).^[21][22] Every Lopi wood and pellet model in the EPA database is rated above that line.^[20] But the credit expired at the end of 2025, so a stove installed in 2026 doesn't qualify.^[22][21]

Travis lists more than 30 Vesta Awards across its brands.^[13] Lopi's awards page lists the Cape Cod's 2011 Best in Show and Green Award, the Deerfield's 2017 Best New Pellet Product, and the 2000 Popular Science award for Ember-Fyre.^[14]

Where Are Lopi Stoves Made?

In Mukilteo, Washington. Lopi says its stoves are designed and hand-assembled at its factory there.^[12] Travis moved from Kirkland to a former Boeing plant in Mukilteo in 2003. The plant spans 11 acres, with a million square feet of production, research, and office space, on an 80-acre campus called the House of Fire.^[4]

In 2025, The Herald reported that Travis builds more than 40,000 fireplaces a year, with about $150 million in annual sales, and that more than 800 retailers in North America and Australia carry its products. The plant runs robot welders and fiber optic lasers, but everything is hand fitted and finished, and each stove is tested before it ships.^[4] Travis gives factory tours on Thursday mornings, by reservation.^[43]

What Does Lopi Make Today?

Wood stoves come first. The steel stoves run from the Answer, the small one, with a 1.4-cubic-foot firebox that heats up to 1,400 square feet, to the mid-sized Evergreen, to the Endeavor, which Lopi calls its best-selling wood stove, with a 2.66-cubic-foot firebox that heats up to 2,000 square feet.^[24][26][23] The Liberty is the big one. It takes 24-inch logs and burns up to 18 hours.^[28] The Rockport is the cast-iron stove.^[29] The Answer and the Evergreen also come as inserts for an existing fireplace.^[25][27]

The pellet stoves are the steel AGP and the cast-iron Deerfield II, and the AGP also comes as an insert.^[31][33][32] The cast-iron gas stoves are the Northfield, the Berkshire, and the Greenfield, with maximum inputs of 22,000, 31,000, and 40,000 BTU an hour. The steel Cypress also runs up to 40,000 BTU, behind three sides of glass.^{[36][34][37][38]} The Berkshire Radiant runs without electricity.^[35] For an existing fireplace, there are the Radiant Plus Medium and Large gas inserts.^[39]

Can I Still Get Parts for an Older Lopi?

Usually, yes. Lopi doesn't sell parts direct; its local dealers do.^[42] Lopi's discontinued manuals page goes back to 1982, with manuals for the 380, 440, and 520 stoves and the X insert. It also shows how the old numbers became today's names: the 380 NT became the Endeavor in 1995, and the Answer name goes back to 1984.^[40]

Lopi warrants its stoves for up to seven years against defects in material and workmanship, five years for cast-iron stoves. Parts, electronics, and labor are covered for the first two years.^[41]