Portable fireplaces have ambiance?
By Susan Wilson
Well the boom box mentality has finally made it to the fireplace. Now you can purchase a portable fireplace (complete with carry handle) for a mere $3,300. I can get a wood stove for less that provides more ambiance and heat. But, I digress.
Conmoto is offering these fireplaces for sale online as the “TRAVELMATE Mobile fireplace without a flue”. The TRAVELMATE is supposed to be smokeless, flueless, and infinitely portable.
The design is described as a “stylized suitcase” and is supposedly safe to place on carpeting, flooring, the dining room table, next to the sofa, in the garden or presumably the bedroom. There is a base that you can get for the TRAVELMATE that looks as precarious as the TRAVELMATE itself. This tall, thin, rectangular base doesn’t need any additional hardware for mounting the portable fireplace.
This portable fireplace has a removable glass pane that is held on by magnets. The pane is only supposed to be removed to light the fire, but as sure as alcohol comes into play as a mood enhancer, some idiot will decide that leaving the glass pane off, allows more heat out and improves the setting. “Opps” comes to mind.
The fuel tank is opened and closed using a sliding panel on the front to “regulate the flame from the outside”. There is no mention of a failsafe cut-off should the fireplace get knocked over by position shifts in front of the “fireplace” or rambunctious pets, or running children (or running dates for that matter).
Let me suggest the purchase of a fire extinguisher with any purchase of the TRAVELMATE. The “stylish good looks” and portability lend themselves all too easily to a disaster just waiting to happen.
As Conmoto has advertised:
The formal design as a stylized suitcase unmistakably conveys the notion that this is an item not bound to any fixed location. A cheerful fire blazing in the unit completes the concept of a fireplace that really wants to be free of its shackles.
“Free of its shackles” uh huh. Not suggested for minors, the inebriated, or those with attention deficit disorder.
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on Saturday, August 2nd, 2008 at 10:58 am under 
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