What's the best fireplace for a vacation home or second home that sits empty part of the year?
In Waynesville the fireplace is freeze protection as much as comfort: at nearly 2,650 feet, with a heating season about three weeks longer than Asheville's, the right choice is a sealed gas unit with millivolt or battery-backup ignition that keeps heating an empty house through an outage. Fuel is mixed here — some streets have natural gas, the rest run propane.
Three extra weeks of winter, and you're not here for them
Waynesville runs 10 to 15 degrees colder than the lower towns, and its heating season outlasts Asheville's by about three weeks — which means three extra weeks a year when a second home is riding out real cold with nobody watching the thermostat. A hearth with power-optional ignition — a millivolt unit like the Valor H5, with no blower and no circuit board, or Napoleon's battery-backup ignition — keeps warmth moving through the house even when the lines go down, and after Helene nobody in Haywood County needs that argument made twice.
What to do with a drafty Hazelwood fireplace
A lot of the older housing stock here, Hazelwood especially, still has open fireplaces that pull more heat out of a house than they put in. If your second home has one, the fix is a sealed insert with a properly sized liner — it converts the draftiest thing in the house into its most reliable heater, and that's a bigger upgrade at this elevation than anywhere south of here. Owners who visit often enough to keep a woodpile sometimes go the other way entirely: Regency's Cascades F1500 wood stove heats up to 1,500 square feet and owes nothing to any utility.
Sorting fuel and permits in Haywood County
Fuel here is street-by-street — part of town has natural gas, the rest is propane — and we install and convert for both. Running or extending either line is licensed work in North Carolina; we pull the permit with Haywood County, meet the inspector, and pressure-test what we run. We're about 35 minutes east in Asheville — call (828) 545-0525 and we'll start with a free in-home assessment.
Fireplace help in Waynesville
We install and service fireplaces throughout Waynesville and the rest of Haywood County — just 35 minutes west from our Asheville-area showroom.