Will my gas fireplace work when the power is out?
Brevard sits in propane country, and that's good news for outages: your tank and regulator feed the fireplace with no dependence on the electric grid. A propane unit with a standing-pilot or millivolt valve will light and heat straight through a power failure. Only a model that also needs a plug-in circuit board for ignition will stay dark.
The tank doesn't care about the power lines
In a propane home, the fuel is already sitting in your yard under pressure — no utility pump, no electricity required to deliver it to the appliance. Pair that tank with a millivolt gas fireplace, where the pilot generates the current to open the valve, and you have heat that's genuinely independent of the grid. The Kozy Heat Springfield 36 is built for exactly this — propane-country cabins that need real heat — and the Mendota FullView suits the timber-frame and mountain-modern homes around here. If a plug-in board is the only ignition, add battery backup.
Rain is the real enemy of your venting
Brevard's 80-plus inches of annual rainfall is hard on the parts that make outage heat reliable. Crawl spaces and chimney chases here take moisture damage, crowns crack, and dampers rust — and a fireplace that lights fine but vents through a corroded, leaking chase isn't dependable when you need it most. Before you count on your hearth for a winter outage, have the venting and gas connections inspected. We permit through Transylvania County and pressure-test every line we run.
What the outage won't power
The blower is the one component that always needs electricity, so during an outage you'll get radiant heat off the firebox without the fan circulating it — still enough to hold a room on a damp mountain evening. If backup heat is the reason you're adding or replacing a fireplace, say so up front and we'll steer you to a standing-pilot or millivolt propane unit. Call (828) 545-0525, forty minutes from our Asheville showroom.
Fireplace help in Brevard
We install and service fireplaces throughout Brevard and the rest of Transylvania County — just 40 minutes southwest from our Asheville-area showroom.