We use ours as much as possible. I have not found they run through excessive gas. The issue for us is that they make the room really hot, very quickly. This is true even though we did not get units that vented out to try to spread heat (I want the fire primarily for aesthetic purposes, not to warm up a room, so I chose based on looks which meant that they don't have those outward blower vents to direct heat out into the room).

So, while I will keep a wood burning fire going from noon till midnight when I go to bed, the gas fireplace I can keep on for maybe an hour or two before it gets too unbearably hot and we have to turn it off.

The gas FP is the first thing my partner turns on as he heads to the coffee pot! We love to sit and enjoy our coffee in front of the FP. During the day and evening when I am home I turn it on if I feel cool which may be several times a day. Ours has 2 switches, one for the esthetic fire and one for the blower to distribute the warmed air. We never use the blower but I love the look of a fire and it does warm the immediate area.

I've had wood stoves in several previous houses and while I love the feel of real wood heat and the look of the real fire I do not miss the work and mess involved with heating with wood.

We have three gas fireplaces and use them all winter. One was wood burning and we converted it to gas. Another was already gas, and we installed a third in our lower level. All three turn off and on by remote control. We have tried every possible remote, including those that automatically turn off the fire when the room gets to a certain temperature and those that have timers and turn it off after a fixed lpnumber of minutes. We've found the best are the simplest on/off remotes, and we have a strict rule to turn them off when leaving the room. Usually we turn them on for 15 min or so, then off, and so on, because as noted above they get the room very warm very quickly. With a remote it is easy to control the heat and I still love the whoosh sound when they light :-)

Our gas bill is absurdly high as we are all propane, with a buried 1000 gallon tank in our yard for the three fireplaces, gas grill, gas range, one of the 85 gallon water heaters and one of the HVAC units, a 5 ton Trane that heats the main level. We go through about $400 of gas a month in winter and our electricity bill is actually worse than that, partly because DH drives an all electric car that is charged every night. My next goal is to put solar collectors on one part of the roof so we can at least do something about the electricity costs.

We have a vacation home in the PA mountains and we have 2 gas fireplaces - one in the bedroom and one in the lower level. We also have a Hearthstone Mansfield wood burning stove in the main level and we can use it to heat the entire main living area which is a 2 story open space. Our property is over 135 acres and we're surrounded by forest so we have plenty of firewood to use for heat. The two gas fireplaces are also Hearthstone units - I think they're the Sterling model and we sized it for the rooms where they're located. We also have a buried 1000 gallon propane tank which supplies the gas for our furnace, hot water tanks, stove and gas fireplaces.

We enjoyed the gas fireplaces so much that when we remodeled our primary home we removed the Avalon wood burning insert in our fireplace and installed a Jotul gas fireplace.

All of the gas fireplaces have remote controls which can turn the gas on or off, but they also have a thermostat so that you can set the temperature to whatever degree you'd like.

We use them all the time - anytime I fell the least chilled I grab the remote and click ON - it's so easy that I feel almost lazy.

The only down side is that I also love a real wood burning fire and sometimes I miss the smell of wood burning. But then I quickly remind myself how nice it is not to lug firewood into the house and how much cleaner the gas units are. At least when we go to our place in the mountains I can still enjoy a real wood fire.

I have a gas fireplace and do use it whenever I want. However, it is propane which is much more expensive these days to heat with than the electric heat pump. I don't let that concern me much and run it as wanted, which is generally for ambiance or for my dog who likes to sleep in front of it.
One nice thing about it is that if the electricity goes off, it will still run. Quite nice in '98? when we lost power for a week because of an ice storm.

We have two of them and use them all winter. Love, love, love for all the reasons listed above. Ours have temperature controls, varying fan speeds, and high/low flame. DH prefers to set the temperature control and I prefer to use the fan and flame settings.

Interesting.... We have sold our lake place and have been looking for a different one. I'm always disappointed when the fireplace is gas. I keep trying to talk myself into thinking I could live with that. Your comments make me think maybe I could though it would likely be propane and the cost of that kind of blows me away. We have natural gas now.

We had a gas insert installed in the existing wood burning fp in our FR when we (finally!) reno'd/decorated the ground floor of our home a few years ago. As DH and I like to to say, it was the "best damned investment!" We use it all winter long (sitting in front of it now as I type this!). Ours does kick out a ton of heat, as others have mentioned, but I just lower the flame height, and temps drop to a more comfortable level pretty quickly. We also have the option of lowering the fan speed, and typically run our fp on the lowest speed (on super cold days/nights, or if we want to warm up the room faster, we'll kick up the fan speed initially, until the room warms up, and then lower it again).

Also, as others mentioned, we can use ours (without the blower/fan) during power outages. And it does warm up the room even without the fan running.

For those of you that converted will you tell me the approximate price and how you decided on which unit to purchase?

We have a giant masonry fireplace that is rarely used. My husband is stubbornly against converting to gas. He thinks a gas fire is not a "real" fire. Well, never having a fire because it is rarely cold enough for the effort is not "real" either. I would love a fire from a flip of a switch. Sigh.

I have an eighty lb tank for propane which might have to be filled twice, if it is really cold. It seems like not that long ago a typical refill was about 160, this year it was 340. Not a big deal but the increase was dramatic.

I have a wood burning stove and a wood-burning fireplace. There are definitely pros and cons to both wood burning and gas burning FPs. They're both bad for the environment, although wood has a teeny leg up in that it uses a renewable resource.

They both heat up a room very well. Gas may or may not, depending on the setup. I rented a cottage once that had a propane "wood" stove, and it was useless. It took HOURS for that thing to warm up the smallest space. And I've been in houses where the gas FP was good for ambience but did nothing as far as warmth goes; and I've been in houses where the gas FP REALLY heated up the room.

Gas fireplaces are obviously easier.

Not sure how they compare $$ wise i.e.: a winter's worth of gas for a fireplace vs. a half or full cord of wood. I split my own wood from a huge tree I had to have cut down, and I've got years worth of firewood from that, and I do the splitting, so no cost there. But most people buy wood and have it delivered.

So, ambience: wood fireplaces win hands down in the ambience department. Wood fireplaces also have sound and scent.

I think it boils down to, do you want the full ambience of a much more labor intensive wood fireplace, or the ease of a gas fireplace along with the cost to covert (around here, @ $5,000) and the less ambience?

I don't use my fireplace when it's really cold outside because of the inefficiency of their sucking the house heat up the chimney. I would use a gas FP, though, in those conditions. But I turn my heat off at night, so when the fire is cooling over night and the flue is open, I'm not losing any heat, and in the morning, the first thing I do is close the flue. However, most people leave their heat on at night. A gas FP is much more efficient from that perspective.

We have both a gas fireplace and a wood stove. We use wood to heat the house, but in the spring and the fall, it can quickly become too hot, so if we want to take the chill out of the air, we flick on the fireplace. We also use the fireplace for ambiance when we sit in the library.

Unfortunately, when we were building, they didn't have the gas fireplaces without pilot lights like they do now. I'd definitely get one of those.

We have a gas fireplace in our FR. It's vented to the outside and it has a wall thermostat. We keep the room warmer than the rest of the house because it is where we spend the most time.

I think it has saved on our overall gas bill because the other zones are set at a lower temperature. We have a wood-burning FP in our LR and we use it fairly regularly. We also have one in the kitchen, but don't use it that often.

We recently bought an electric FP for our Cape house. We turn it on as soon as we arrive and it does a great job of heating the FR.

The initial cost of the gas FP we have here was over 3K, many years ago. But I think it has paid for itself by now in saving on the heating bill. Plus, it's just so easy and toasty!

What are you having to do to convert? Most fireplaces here are built with gas lines to them and the gas can be capped and not used at all, used as a starter for wood burning or used with a burner and ceramic logs (or a burner and glass for a more contemporary look). If the gas is in place, a burner and logs can be $500-1,000.

There is no question that burning wood in an open fireplace is deleterious to ine's health. Google the issue and you will find a wealth of scientific information, much of it issued by government agencies{{gwi:807}}, on the health and environmental dangers associated with burning wood. Since the original question was about the cost I did not bring up the subject, but now that it has been brought up, the OP should know that wood burning, open fireplaces are not the benign heat sources popularly supposed.

How Wood Smoke Harms Your Health, a publication from Washington state:
https://fortress.wa.gov/ecy/publications/publications/91br023.pdf

From the EPA:
http://www.airnow.gov/index.cfm?action=smoke.index

Families for clean air: Wood Smoke Myths and Facts
http://www.familiesforcleanair.org/myths/

Environmental and Human Health .org
http://www.ehhi.org/woodsmoke/health_effects.shtml

There are many more and all say more of less the same thing. The last link is one of,the most compelling, IMO.

Edited because somehow I lost part of my first sentence when I posted this reply.

{{!gwi}}

This post was edited by kswl on Sun, Dec 28, 14 at 18:36

As OP mentioned, we pretty much don't use an open woodburning fireplace. And I personally am not preoccupied with all the things in life that are potentially harmful to me. Life itself is dangerous so I prefer to just enjoy those things in life that I like and not worry about it. No offense to those who do like to pay more attention to that stuff.

Find out first if natural gas lines are in your area and what it would cost to get them to your house. If they are unavailable, propane is the next choice. Get the price on stubbing a line to where you want and decide whether you want to rent or buy a tank and what size. (buy, if this house is long term) The logs, the surrounds are another price. If you convert your wood fireplace to gas, the surround is already there. So you would have logs, labor and the tank, plus tank filling.

In our previous home we installed a gas fireplace in footings left by the previous owners. I loved it. It warmed the basement nicely. Down side--keeping the kids away. It was flush with the wall and did not have a raised hearth that tends to stand as a barrier. When we moved I was not THRILLED to have a wood burning fireplace. We lived here a good 5/6 years before we ever used it. The mess in my living room was my main issue. We too have acreage=free wood but with no gas lighter, the mess of kindling etc...well all I can say is the candles that I burned in it were very nice ambiance. To convert, one has to run a new flue insert up inside the existing chimney. I am not sold on the "health" issues--anyone can find any studies to support their beliefs--but I can attest to what burning anything does to one's paint. I do not know if a gas fireplace would show lines where the rafters run under the dry wall like candles and wood fireplaces do. If I had an extra $5k and could be convinced running the gas line would not be hideous I would absolutely convert. My sis added one to her basement. Maybe it was a cheaper model but when it is on it actually creates a wind tunnel sucking colder air into the room. The venting/fan needs to be done well. On a side note our home also came with a wood burning stove which we used all day, all winter. It made the finished basement actually usable. A few years back we converted to a corn burner--so much less work!! Now we use wood pellets as the price of corn is prohibitive. Also I prefer not using FOOD for fuel. Filling the pellet stove once a day vs. every hour is a "GOOD THING".
I believe there are many places that are outlawing wood burning fireplaces in new construction. As with the rotary phone soon there will be a generation who only know of wood fires in the back yard!

We have an existing gas line to our gas grill on the deck above the FR that they were able to extend/tap into (?) for the gas insert. They were able to run it along the outside of the house to the fp (chimney), and then drill through to bring it into the fp opening to connect to the insert.

The insert can be removed if the next (or next-next, etc.) owners want to revert it back to a wood burning fp. No structural changes were done as part of the install.

Ours is a Regency Horizon gas insert. It's one of the brands/models our dealer sells. Our a/c guys also do fp's, and we know, and trust them and their work, so we purchased our gas insert from them.

When we first started talking to our guys at a local home show about having a gas insert installed, our model (gas insert) hadn't yet been introduced. We weren't enamored of the gas inserts with the "bowl" or "boat" shaped holders (for the gas/flame ports) that were available at that time. What we really liked, were the frameless, in-wall design gas fireplaces, with the row of ports embedded in the crystals. We were ecstatic when we were told (when we finally got serious later in the year about getting an insert), that Regency had just introduced the model we ended up getting. It was the closest thing to our "inspiration" look, and we love it! Now if only I could convince DH to have an in-wall gas fp installed in our MB! LOL

I believe our gas insert cost somewhere between $5-$6K installed. That includes the mantel cover they fabricated for us, and painted to match the frame around the insert (they might have "thrown it in" because it was something that we---the guy who originally took the order, measurements, etc., and I, came up with, and not something they'd really done before).

I suppose the next step after outlawing wood burning fireplaces will be outlawing backyard wood burning fires as well. What's the difference if it's an environmental concern.

Do people believe there are no environmental consequences to burning natural gas, oil, etc.??? Nevermind the geopolitical consequences of the whole fossil fuel thing.

To answer the second question:

We converted ours to a gas insert. The fireplace never burned wood and probably had some sort of gas heater (from the 30s) at one point. We put in a Valor zero clearance engine. For the installation company to run the gas line from our main in the basement, line the chimney, cap the chimney and install the engine it cost us $500-800. For the actual engine and decorative face, it was $3500.

Expensive yes, but we use it every day. We spend all of our time normally in the living room with the insert. That is also where our thermostat is. So when the the insert is on, the heat to the rest of the house turns off. So we are barely using any energy.

The other night there was a segment on the news about new regulations regarding gas fireplace doors. They reach very high temps and children have been badly burned by touching the doors. Something to think about if you have little ones around. Many years ago we had friends whose daughter got into the gated area around their wood stove and fell onto the stove. It took several surgeries over many years to restore her hands to a state of normal function and appearance.

When you convert a WB fireplace to gas logs, how is the venting handled? We sealed up our fireplace (not permanently) because of the breeze that came through even with the damper closed. I want gas logs but I assume the whole thing will have to be revented and I don't who to get to do it.

Selcier, I had a new furnace put in last spring, and I also had them move the thermostat to the living room, where the FP is and which has the most insulation so is the warmest room in the house. so far, my heat bill is down @ 33% from last year.

Gibby - there are many municipialies that prohibit backyard wood burning. Our home in a NJ suburb prohibits outdoor burning of any kind - wood or leaves.. We also have a vacation home in the PA mountains and we can't have an outdoor open fire of any kind either.