Can I convert my gas fireplace back to wood-burning, and is it worth it versus keeping gas?
Swannanoa is rebuilding, and a rebuild is the perfect moment to decide wood versus gas on purpose instead of inheriting someone's old choice. The storm pushed a lot of new fireplace and stove installs here. If your Grovemont-era masonry firebox survived and your gas logs are sitting in it, wood can come back — and if you're framing a room fresh, either path is open to you now.
Rebuilding is a chance to choose
Most people inherit whatever fireplace the last owner left them. Swannanoa's storm recovery has flipped that — homeowners rebuilding and renovating are choosing their hearth deliberately, which is why we've seen demand climb for both wood stoves and gas fireplaces in reworked homes. If you're taking a Grovemont or Bee Tree house down to studs anyway, going 'back' to wood isn't a retrofit fight; it's just a decision, and a Class A wood chimney is far easier to build into an open wall than to add later. The question stops being 'can I' and becomes 'which do I actually want.'
Why wood keeps coming up
The reason wood's on the table at all here is fresh memory: when the grid went down for days, the homes that stayed warm were the ones with a working wood or gas hearth. Wood is the gold standard for that — heat you own outright, no pilot, no power. But Swannanoa has natural-gas service, and a gas fireplace with battery-backup ignition also keeps heating through an outage, minus the hauling. A common local answer is both: gas for daily ease, a wood stove for the long outages. Either beats central heat, which stops the moment the power does.
Watch the damp, pull the Buncombe permit
The Swannanoa valley's fog, cold-air pooling, and river damp are rough on masonry chimneys, so any restored flue gets inspected before it carries wood. Gas-line work is permitted with Buncombe County and pressure-tested. We're 15 minutes east of the Asheville showroom. Call (828) 545-0525.
Fireplace help in Swannanoa
We install and service fireplaces throughout Swannanoa and the rest of Buncombe County — just 15 minutes east from our Asheville-area showroom.
Related questions
- Should I get a gas fireplace or a wood-burning fireplace?
- Which fireplace still works during a power outage — gas, wood, or electric?
- Should I install gas logs or keep burning real wood in my fireplace?
- Is it cheaper to heat your house with wood or with gas?
- Which requires more maintenance, a gas fireplace or a wood-burning fireplace?