Your old wood-burning fireplace is charming, but there’s a point when the hassle becomes more trouble than it’s worth. Imagine this: you have warmth and ambiance without having to get up to build the fire or add logs. Below, we discuss the reasons for switching out your old wood-burning fireplace with a shiny new gas fireplace.
Reasons For Switching to a Gas Fireplace
With a gas fireplace, you have instant heat with the flip of a switch. No more:
Ordering, unloading, splitting and storing wood.
Buying stacks of kindling.
Storing piles of newspaper.
Carrying logs in a few at a time.
Building and tending the fire.
Cleaning up the ash and charred remains of logs.
How does that list seem to you? To us, it seems tiring.
But you don’t have to leave the fireplace empty all winter. That’s a big hole in the wall dragging heat out of your house. Instead, you can convert the old wood-burning fireplace to gas and enjoy all the good things about a fireplace without any of the hassle.
Gas Fireplace Conversion Cost
The cost of a gas fireplace conversion depends on a number of factors, so it’s not easy to quote an exact price without more information.
Any contractor posting a price online is just trying to get you to call, where they’ll usually charge more than they claimed.
Then, before you change your wood fireplace to gas, it’s best to start with a chimney cleaning. The built-up creosote from your wood-burning fireplace needs to go.
We’ll have to extend your gas line to service the new fireplace (this is less intrusive than you might think, assuming you have a gas line).
We’ll then have to fit the gas fireplace to your existing masonry work and seal the edges seamlessly, so the gas fireplace looks like the house was built around it. This is actually called a gas insert. We insert it into the existing fireplace space.