Acucraft Fireplaces — Authorized Dealer & Custom Installation on Chicago’s North Shore

Get in touch  Call 847-994-4388

Why we love Acucraft

They build what you draw

Acucraft has manufactured fireplaces in Big Lake, Minnesota since 1979, and they build direct to order — the fireplace is co-created with the factory rather than picked off a shelf. A twelve-foot linear gas fireplace open on both sides of a wall is not a special request to them. It’s Tuesday.

For us, that changes what we can say yes to. When an architect brings a drawing where the fireplace is the organizing element of the room, most manufacturers force a compromise. Acucraft usually doesn’t.

The engineering shows up before the fireplace does

Acucraft supplies BIM and CAD files and full specifications to the installers working on their units. That sounds like a small thing. It isn’t. It means the framing, clearances, and venting path get resolved on paper — before the framer is on site and before anyone finds out the chase can’t carry the flue where the drawing put it.

Most fireplace problems we get called to fix on new construction started as a coordination failure. Acucraft projects have fewer of them.

They stand behind it

Acucraft backs its fireplaces with a 100% lifetime guarantee. We install a lot of hearth products, and that is not a common term in this industry.

Wood, not just the idea of wood

Acucraft still builds real wood-burning fireplaces — The American and the Hearthroom lines — for people who want to burn wood rather than watch a gas flame imitate it. On the North Shore, where a lot of housing stock has a wood-burning fireplace that was never built to draft properly, replacing a poor performer with a purpose-built wood unit is often the honest answer.

What Acucraft makes

Category	Options
Gas fireplaces	Custom builds plus Blaze, Direct Vent, Signature and Timeless series
Wood-burning fireplaces	The American, Hearthroom
Vapor fireplaces	Water- and light-based flame effect, no combustion
Outdoor	Outdoor fireplaces, fire tables, fire burners
Viewing configurations	Single-sided, see-through, peninsula, four-sided
Shapes	Linear, panoramic, circular, multi-view
Interiors	Traditional logs or clean glass and stone media

Acucraft is the right call when…

• The fireplace is the reason the room is shaped the way it is
• You want a see-through fireplace between a living room and a screened porch
• You’re building new, or taking a house down to studs
• Standard sizes don’t work — the opening needs to be a specific dimension
• You want a wood-burning fireplace engineered to actually draft
• An architect or designer is already involved and has a drawing

If you want a well-made gas fireplace in a standard opening and you’d rather not wait on a custom build, Urbana is usually the better answer, and we’ll tell you so.

Installing an Acucraft on the North Shore

A custom fireplace is a construction project, not a delivery. Here is what it actually involves in the houses we work in.

Venting comes first, not last. Direct-vent runs have real limits on length and number of offsets. In a 1920s Winnetka colonial with a finished third floor, the question of whether the vent can get from the family room to the roof — legally, within the manufacturer’s tested configuration — decides where the fireplace can go. We resolve that before anything is ordered.

Termination height is not negotiable. Vent and chimney terminations have to clear the roofline by a set distance, and the North Shore’s steep roofs and tall gables push those terminations higher than people expect. A termination that’s technically legal but sits in a wind eddy off a dormer will smoke, backdraft, or nuisance-trip a safety switch. We check it against the actual roof, not a generic diagram.

The chase has to be built to keep water out. A new fireplace on an exterior wall usually means a new chase. Chases fail at the same four places every time: the cap, the flashing, the siding-to-masonry transition, and the vent penetration. We build and detail those ourselves, because we’re the ones who get called back in three years when somebody else didn’t.

Gas supply gets verified, not assumed. A large linear burner can demand more than the existing line can deliver, especially in a house already running a furnace, water heater, range, and dryer. We confirm the gas load before the fireplace is specified.

Permits and inspection. Every North Shore village handles hearth permits a little differently. We pull them and schedule the inspections.

What Chimney Monkey does on an Acucraft project

We are not a delivery service that hands off to a subcontractor. Since 2017 we’ve kept masons, inspectors, and researchers on staff, and a fireplace project uses all three.

• Design phase: site visit, venting feasibility, clearance and framing requirements, coordination with your architect, builder, or designer
• Specification: working directly with Acucraft to configure the unit, with drawings and submittals before anything is ordered
• Rough-in: framing coordination, clearance verification, venting path, gas
• Masonry: surrounds, hearths, chases, and terminations, built by our own crew
• Finish and commissioning: installation, startup, and a documented walkthrough of how the fireplace operates
• After: we’re the same company that inspects, sweeps, and services it, and we have more than 1,100 Google reviews from North Shore homeowners

Common questions

Is Chimney Monkey an authorized Acucraft dealer?

Yes. Chimney Monkey is an authorized Acucraft dealer and installer for Chicago’s North Shore. We work directly with Acucraft to specify and configure each fireplace, then design, install, and service it ourselves from our Buffalo Grove location — including Winnetka, Lake Forest, Highland Park, Deerfield, Glenview, and Northbrook.

How long does a custom Acucraft fireplace take?

Because Acucraft builds each unit to order, lead time depends on the configuration and the current production schedule. Plan around the manufacturing lead time rather than the install week — the installation itself is a small fraction of the calendar. We confirm current lead times with Acucraft during design so your build schedule is real.

Can an Acucraft fireplace go into an existing house?

Often, yes. The deciding factor is almost always venting: whether a compliant vent path exists from the fireplace location to a proper termination. We evaluate that on site before anything else is discussed. Retrofits into existing homes are common on the North Shore, particularly during full-floor renovations.

Acucraft or Mason-Lite — what’s the difference?

Acucraft is a manufactured fireplace, custom-built to your drawing, in gas, wood, or vapor. Mason-Lite is a modular masonry firebox — real masonry mass, standard sizes, faster to install, and well suited to outdoor use. Choose Acucraft when the design is unusual. Choose Mason-Lite when you want traditional masonry in a location that can’t carry a hand-built one.

Do you service Acucraft fireplaces you didn’t install?

Yes. We inspect, service, and repair existing Acucraft installations across the North Shore. Our inspections are paid diagnostic appointments — we document the condition of the appliance and the venting system and give you findings you can use regardless of who does any resulting work.

What does an Acucraft fireplace cost?

Cost depends entirely on the configuration, the venting, and the surround, so a number quoted before a site visit would be a guess. The design consultation is where that gets answered honestly: we look at the location, confirm what’s possible, and price the actual project.

Acucraft installation across Chicago’s North Shore

Winnetka · Lake Forest · Highland Park · Glencoe · Deerfield · Northbrook · Glenview · Wilmette · Evanston · Buffalo Grove · Skokie · Lake Bluff · Highwood

Get in touch  Call 847-994-4388

Chimney Monkey · 741 Hastings Dr, Buffalo Grove, IL 60089.

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