Who installs wood stoves — a chimney sweep or a fireplace dealer?
In Leicester, a wood stove is installed by a fireplace dealer, not a chimney sweep — and on these rural properties, some with limited electrical capacity, wood's no-power heat is the whole point. The dealer sizes the stove, sets clearances and the hearth, and relines or runs the chimney, then permits it with Buncombe County. A sweep cleans it afterward; Steady Flame does both.
Wood heat where the grid is thin
Out toward Sandy Mush and Turkey Creek, Leicester is rural, largely on propane, and some remote properties have limited electrical capacity to begin with — which is why wood heat is so popular here. A wood stove needs no circuit, no blower, and no power company to keep a house warm, and on a clear winter night when cold-air drainage runs these valleys five to eight degrees colder than Asheville, that self-sufficiency is worth a lot. Wood is heat you own outright, and it doesn't care what the grid is doing.
Delivering that reliability depends on the install. We size the stove to the space, hold clearances to combustible walls, set a code-compliant hearth pad, and reline an existing masonry flue with stainless sized to the stove — or run a fresh insulated Class A chimney where there's nothing to reuse. That's a dealer's build, not a sweep's cleaning visit.
Permitted and serviced by one crew
A chimney sweep is who you bring in once the stove is running, to clear creosote and inspect the flue each year — real work we also handle. What a sweep won't do is engineer and permit a new installation. We pull the permit with Buncombe County and meet the inspector, so the job is documented for insurance and any future sale of the land.
Then the same crew comes back for the annual cleaning — no separate contractor to find out in the country. It's one accountable company for install and upkeep both. We're about 15 minutes west of the Asheville showroom. Call (828) 545-0525 for a free in-home assessment.
Fireplace help in Leicester
We install and service fireplaces throughout Leicester and the rest of Buncombe County — just 15 minutes west from our Asheville-area showroom.
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