After Hurricane Helene, what's the best fireplace setup so my family is never without heat again?
In Arden's 1980s and '90s homes around Royal Pines and Skyland, the open masonry fireplace is quietly making an outage worse — it pulls warm air up the flue instead of heating. The never-cold-again fix is a sealed gas insert with battery-backup or millivolt ignition, which turns that tired firebox into a real heater that works with the power out.
Your open fireplace is a net heat loss
The established Arden neighborhoods — Skyland, Royal Pines, Glenn Bridge, Avery Creek — are full of 1980s and '90s homes with open masonry fireplaces, and here's the uncomfortable truth about them: with the damper open, an open firebox can run a net heat loss, sending more warm air up the chimney than it returns to the room. In a multi-day outage, when the central heat is already dead, that's the opposite of what you need. A sealed gas insert changes the equation entirely — it drops into the existing opening, seals the draft, and with millivolt or battery-backup ignition it keeps producing heat while the grid's down. A Napoleon Oakville X4 or a Kozy Heat Chaska insert does exactly this. Arden is on the natural-gas mains, so the fuel's already at the house.
One licensed company, permitted with Buncombe County
Because the gas line is licensed work in North Carolina, a mason can rebuild your surround and a showroom can sell you an insert, but neither can legally connect it to fuel — we can. We handle the insert, a correctly sized liner, the gas piping, the Buncombe County permit, and the inspection, all under one workmanship guarantee. An insert doesn't just fix the outage problem; it ends the everyday cold draft an open flue pulls into the room the rest of winter too. We're 15 minutes south of our Asheville showroom at 629 Emma Rd. Call (828) 545-0525 for a free in-home assessment.
Fireplace help in Arden
We install and service fireplaces throughout Arden and the rest of Buncombe County — just 15 minutes south from our Asheville-area showroom.
Related questions
- Can a gas fireplace heat my house through a multi-day outage like the one after Hurricane Helene?
- Is a wood stove or a gas fireplace better backup heat for a mountain home?
- Which types of fireplaces work without any electricity?
- Should I get a fireplace or a standby generator for outages — or both?
- My fireplace or chimney was flooded during Hurricane Helene — is it safe to use?