Gas fireplace (where there is no fireplace)

[Lee]

Idle question while I'm house hunting. My current row house has a wood burning fireplace that I have literally never used - I don't want to deal with lighting a fire and then worrying about it when I want to go upstairs (and trust me, I'm a worrier). However I do like the *look* of the fireplace.

I've looked at several houses recently, and thought that if they had regular fp's I might convert that to gas since I like the idea of being able to turn it on and off. But some of the houses don't have any fp's at all. Is it possible to put a decent looking "after market" fireplace in a house, without having to do a major renovation? Something that doesn't look like the "fireplace in a box" things that they sell on HSN? I wouldn't be using it for heating a house (except maybe if there was a power outage), but as a supplemental heater, sort of like a pretty space heater.

I guess I'd entertain the idea of electric as well if they look decent. The last electric one I saw quite a while ago was only a step above a fan with orange tissue paper!

I haven't even gone to look at any yet. Just thought I'd ask here to see if this is even practical to consider, or to find out what I should look for if I go looking.

Thanks

[Edwin Pawlowski]

Take a ride to a local fireplace dealer. There are plenty of free standing gas and propane units that look better than anything electric.

[willshak]

on 9/16/2007 1:22 PM Lee said the following:

I have a propane fireplace in my "4 Seasons" sunroom, just for a little extra heat in the winter. Most times it is off, except for early morning before the sun warms the room up (it is on the south side of the house). I bought the fireplace insert and the wooden surround at Lowes ( I think the whole thing cost me $1200). I elected for a vent free unit since the fireplace is up against the original house wall (the propane clothes dryer is right behind the fireplace wall and it was easy to connect the propane. There was no way I could vent it without major renovations, and I didn't want a vent pipe going through the all aluminum sunroom roof and up alongside the siding of the two story house, then through the roof overhang. I did mount a smoke/carbon monoxide detector in the sunroom.

I'm anticipating some negative responses, so for the other readers:. We've had it for 4 years now and no one died, so save the dire warnings. If I could have vented it, I would have.

[Tony Hwang]

Hi, Gas FP insert is common. Hope it'll be easier for you to run gas line and power to it. Even there is remote control for gas FP(on and off, fan control)