Will a gas insert seal off the drafts and old smoke odors coming from my open fireplace chimney?
Yes. On Leicester's rural properties — many on propane, some with limited electrical capacity — a gas insert seals the open firebox behind a stainless liner and surround panel, caps the flue that drafts your heat away, and clears the old smoke smell. And because it can run on millivolt ignition, it heats even where power is tight or out.
Rural, propane, and power-light
Leicester is large rural lots up Sandy Mush and Turkey Creek, many running on propane, with wood heat popular and some remote properties short on electrical capacity. That combination shapes the fix: a sealed gas insert seals your open flue and can run on a millivolt system that needs no household power to make heat — so a place with a small electrical service, or none during an outage, still gets warmth. A Kozy Heat unit suits cold propane homes here.
Sealing the draft and the smell
An open masonry fireplace on a cold Leicester night is a heat drain — rural cold-air drainage runs these valleys five to eight degrees colder than Asheville — and the creosote in the flue breathes stale smoke back in on damp days. A [gas insert](/services/gas-insert-installation) caps the chimney with a stainless liner and seals the face with a surround panel, so the draft stops and the odor goes. Where the open hearth ran a net heat loss, it commonly runs 70% efficient or better.
Licensed gas, permitted, close in
Connecting propane is licensed work — the tank stays with your supplier, but the piping, regulator, and appliance setup are ours, permitted through Buncombe County and pressure-tested. We [inspect the flue and size the liner](/services/fireplace-inspection) as part of the job. Wood heat is popular out here too, and a [wood-to-gas conversion](/services/wood-to-gas-conversion) is the bigger version of this same upgrade. We're 15 minutes west of the Asheville showroom. Call (828) 545-0525.
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.
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?