Town & Country

How Did Town & Country Start?

It started with a wood stove. In 1978, Paul Erickson used his cutting torch and welding machine to build a stove for himself in his basement in Duncan, British Columbia, on Vancouver Island.^[12] That stove became Pacific Energy, and the company is still headquartered in Duncan, about 30 miles north of Victoria.^[13]

Town & Country came later, and it came from a question. At the 1995 HPBExpo in Las Vegas, architects and designers asked Erickson's team why every fireplace looked the same. Pacific Energy's answer was to go with edge-to-edge glass and strip off the hardware that fireplaces usually carried.^[13] The company's own catalog puts it this way: Town & Country was born because buyers couldn't find a direct-vent fireplace built first for the look of the fire.^[2]

The idea was Tom Pugh's. Town & Country was his brainchild, and on The Fire Time Podcast, Bill Lentz, owner and president of Pugh & Associates, credits Tom (1952–2012) with inventing the clean-face fireplace.^[14] Lentz remembers him as someone who could see further down the road than anyone else in the industry. Tom also created the Hearth, Patio & Barbecue Association's Government Affairs Academy in Washington, D.C., and wrote Blueprint for Success, a playbook for hearth dealers.^[14] One New Brunswick dealer told Hearth & Home they took that book as their bible.^[15]

The Town & Country name was in use by July 29, 2002, in the United States and by August 1, 2002, in Canada, according to its trademark records.^[16][17] Hearth & Home magazine dates the launch of the clean-faced line to 2002,^[12][13] while the brand's own 2013 history page says 2003.^[9] When you see “since 1978” on Town & Country's website today, that's Pacific Energy's founding year.^[1]

What Is a Clean-Face Fireplace?

Before Town & Country, most gas fireplaces wore louvers and hardware around the glass.^[13][10] A clean-face fireplace drops all of that. It's a frame of glass around the fire, with no louvers, gaps, or visible controls.^[2] Town & Country built its line around that look, and Hearth & Home called them the industry's first clean-faced gas models.^[13]

The TC42 was the first. Town & Country says the TC42 introduced the clean-face category,^[2] and it won an Innovative Product Award at Canada's IIDEX/NeoCon design show in 2003.^[10] The TC54 won a design award there in 2006, the WS54 Wide Screen in 2007, and the flush-mount power vent termination, which sits flat against the outside wall, in 2009.^[10]

The fireboxes are part of the look too. Pacific Energy welds them with continuous seams,^[13] and fits them with ceramic panels and glare-free glass.^[2] By 2013, the Design-A-Fire program let you combine 10 fireplace models, 9 fires with logs, river rock, or glass, and 8 styles of firebox panels, for more than 300 combinations.^[9]

Is a Town & Country Fireplace a Heater? What Does “Decorative” Mean?

Read the rating label on a Town & Country and you'll find this line: “This is a decorative product and is not intended to be used as a heating appliance.”^[5] We found the same line in all eight current indoor installation manuals we checked, including the TC42, the TC54, and the HeliFire 360.^[3][5][6][7]

That's a certification, not modesty. The indoor models are certified to ANSI Z21.50/CSA 2.22, the standard for vented gas fireplaces,^[5] not to ANSI Z21.88/CSA 2.33, the standard for vented gas fireplace heaters.^[23] The TC42 Outdoor is certified to ANSI Z21.97, the standard for outdoor decorative gas fireplaces.^[8] In Canada, the line is written into law. A decorative gas fireplace is marked for decorative use only and has no thermostat, while a heating gas fireplace made since January 1, 2020, has to reach at least 50 percent fireplace efficiency.^[22]

Decorative doesn't mean cold. A TC42 burns up to 61,000 BTU an hour, and a TC54 up to 84,000,^[5][6] so you'll feel the warmth across the room. But the efficiencies on the labels run from 16.8 percent on the HeliFire 360 to 38.5 percent on the TC54,^[7][6] which means most of the gas's energy doesn't end up as heat in your room. The TC42 even offers a cool-wall system that channels heat to keep the space right above the fireplace cool.^[2]

So what does that mean for you? Buy a Town & Country for the fire itself. If you need a fireplace to heat a room through the winter, tell your dealer, and they can show you heater-rated fireplaces to compare.

Who Owns Town & Country?

Town & Country is a division of Pacific Energy Fireplace Products Ltd.,^[1] a British Columbia company that also owns the Town & Country Fireplaces trademark.^[18][16] Pacific Energy itself is owned by NIBE Industrier AB, a Swedish company.^[21]

NIBE bought in over three years. It took 10 percent of Pacific Energy in early 2021, bought another 41 percent in July 2022 to become the majority owner, and agreed to buy the rest in the first half of 2023.^[19] By the end of 2023, NIBE's annual report listed Pacific Energy Fireplace Products Ltd. as 100 percent owned.^[20] At the time of the 2022 deal, Paul Erickson and the management team stayed on to run the business.^[19]

Inside Pacific Energy, each brand has its own job. Pacific Energy is the main brand, with wood and gas products. True North is the mid-priced wood line, and Town & Country is the premium gas brand.^[19] Elegant Electric, an electric fireplace brand, joined the family in 2025.^[1] The Pacific Energy story has its own page: Pacific Energy.

Where Are Town & Country Fireplaces Made?

In Duncan, British Columbia. The rating label on a Town & Country reads “Made in Canada” and names Pacific Energy Fireplace Products Ltd. of Duncan as the maker,^[5] and NIBE describes Pacific Energy as running its own complete production plant in Canada.^[21]

In 2018, the company had 200 employees and a 100,000-square-foot plant, and Hearth & Home showed Town & Country fireboxes being built with continuous-seam welds.^[13] When NIBE took control in 2022, Pacific Energy as a whole had about 170 employees and about CAD 50 million in annual sales.^[19]

What Does Town & Country Make Today?

Gas fireplaces, and nothing else. Every Town & Country is a direct-vent gas fireplace, drawing its combustion air from outside and sending its exhaust back out.^[2] The traditional models are the TC30, TC36, TC36 Arch, TC42, and TC54, and the WS38 and WS54 are the Wide Screens. The TC36 and WS54 also come as see-throughs, and there are outdoor TC36, TC42, and WS54 models, plus a WS54 see-through that's indoors on one side and outdoors on the other.^[3][2]

The HeliFire 360 is something else: one long flame designed as a fire feature, for indoors or outdoors.^[2][7] And the semi-custom Architectural Series runs flames from 5 to 8 feet long, in seven layouts and three glass heights.^[13][2]

Most models take a choice of burners and log sets. The names you'll see in the manuals include Chalet, Country Home, Heartwood, Tranquility, Diamond, and Birchwood,^[3] and Town & Country's power vent system lets the vent run up to 110 feet when a standard vent can't reach.^[2]

Can I Still Get Parts for an Older Town & Country?

Usually, yes. Pacific Energy still builds Town & Country fireplaces in Duncan, and dealers order parts by model, series, and serial number. Find the rating label before you call. Many models have gone through several series. The TC42, for example, has been sold as Series A, Series B, and today's Series D2.^[11][5]

The warranty helps too. Town & Country's limited lifetime coverage, for parts, includes the combustion chamber, the burner tube assembly, the glass against thermal breakage, and porcelain finishes, and it covers the original buyer of a fireplace bought from an authorized dealer.^[4] Current manuals are on Town & Country's manuals page,^[3] and an archived copy of its 2013 archived manuals page covers older Series A, B, and C models.^[11]