Will a gas insert seal off the drafts and old smoke odors coming from my open fireplace chimney?
Yes. Clyde's 1960s-to-'80s ranch homes came with dated fireplaces that are prime candidates for exactly this: a gas insert seals the open firebox behind a stainless liner and surround panel, caps the flue that's been drafting your heat out, and stops the smoke smell that river humidity keeps pushing back into the room.
Ranch fireplaces past their prime
The ranch-style builds around Clyde came with fireplaces that are now decades out of date, and the open masonry ones are ready for an insert. Sitting in the Pigeon River valley, Clyde shares Canton and Waynesville's cold-air drainage, and river humidity here rusts dampers and degrades masonry chimneys — so that open flue is drafting heat out while a corroded damper and damp brick feed the stale smoke smell back in.
What the insert changes
A [gas insert](/services/gas-insert-installation) slides into the existing firebox, runs a stainless liner up the chimney to cap the draft, and seals the old opening with a surround panel — draft closed, odor gone, only the unit's sealed exhaust in the flue. Where the dated open fireplace ran a net heat loss, the insert commonly runs 70% efficient or better and genuinely heats the room, and with millivolt or battery-backup ignition it keeps heating when the power's out. We [inspect the flue and check the damper](/services/fireplace-inspection) before sizing the liner.
Fuel, permit, and the drive
Clyde runs mixed — natural gas in parts of town, propane out toward the valleys — and we configure the insert for whichever you have. Running the fuel is licensed work: we pull the Haywood County permit, pressure-test the line, and meet the inspector, the step a handyman legally can't finish. We're 25 minutes west of the Asheville showroom. Call (828) 545-0525 for a free assessment.
Fireplace help in Clyde
We install and service fireplaces throughout Clyde and the rest of Haywood County — just 25 minutes west from our Asheville-area showroom.
Related questions
- Does replacing an open wood fireplace with an insert improve the air in my house?
- Can an unused fireplace or chimney cause moisture and mold problems in the house?
- Why do I smell smoke in my house when the fireplace isn't even burning?
- Does a direct vent gas fireplace use the air in my room for combustion?
- Do gas fireplace inserts burn cleaner than gas log sets?