Advantages to a Gas Fireplace

In the past, units of gas fireplaces were mostly free-standing, who took care of potentially valuable living space in your home. They also had only flickering blue flames of the atmosphere - a far cry from the dancing of yellow and orange flames in a wood burning fireplace.

Today's models are better every year. You can get a free standing model or a fireplace insert model. You can choose between a vented or vent less model, depending on your needs. You can choose between natural gas and propane connections. You can also connect a gas fireplace up, so should the electricity out today, you can disconnect and cap the gas line in a few minutes, and thus transform your fireplace back to a wood burning fireplace. This is a great advantage if you live in an area where ice storms and other severe weather threatens the power outages that can last for days in sub-zero weather.

Space is a great advantage for a gas fireplace. Unless you use propane and have a tank on your property, you do not need to save gas on your property. Otherwise, the gas just gets comfortable whistled in from the gas company.

Wood for a traditional wood stove must be purchased (or cut), chopped to size, stacked dragged into the snowy winters, and then you have to clean up. Also, woodpiles are invitations for all sorts of creatures, some dangerous.

Gas fireplaces are typically cleaner than traditional wood-burning fireplaces. There is no wood to haul, so you will not have the bark and wood chips throughout the chimney and the floor. There are no ashes to scoop out and dispose of regularly. There is also no danger of burning logs tumbling out of the grate or sparks, embers jumping out of your floor.

You can also get models with fairly realistic looking logs and burning embers. But the logs in gas fireplaces are made of ceramic or concrete. You can even get the remote to change the flames to your taste!

With gas fireplaces, you can disable them completely before you go to bed or leave. No more worry about setting fire out or wait until it burns out.

If you have small children in the house, a gas fireplace can give you great peace of mind knowing they will not throw anything into the fire, or climbing up the chimney when you're not looking for 3 seconds.

Gas fireplaces are also an advantage in areas where burn bans are in force in order to reduce the amount of smoke in the environment. Even in an elevated burn ban, you can still run a gas fireplace when you can not have a wood burning fire or even a fire in a pellet stove.

But before you buy a gas fireplace, do research and ask lots of questions about the different models and features so you can make the best decision possible.