Eagle Mountain's Gas Hearths, Serviced Properly

Gas appliances have a reputation for needing nothing, and it is half deserved. There is no creosote and no ash. What there is instead is dust, corrosion, and a set of safety devices that only prove they still work when they are tested.

Dust is the local problem

Eagle Mountain is dry, open and still filling in. There is a lot of bare ground, a lot of new construction, and not much mature landscaping to hold soil down. Fine dust gets into everything, including the underside of a burner. A gas burner meters air and fuel through small ports and a venturi, and a partly blocked port does not simply burn smaller, it burns badly. Lazy yellow flames, soot on the glass and a smell during the first burn of the season all trace back to the same place. Cleaning the burner assembly, the pilot orifice and the air shutter is the core of an annual service, and on a house out here it makes a visible difference.

What the annual visit actually includes

The glass comes out and the gasket around it is inspected, because that gasket is what makes a direct-vent unit sealed, and a perished one lets combustion products into the room. The logs come out, get cleaned and go back in the exact positions the manufacturer specifies, since a log moved an inch into the flame path is the most common cause of sooting we see. We clean the burner and pilot, check the thermocouple or thermopile output rather than just looking at it, test the safety shutoff, check the vent run and the termination screen, clean the blower and check the gas pressure at the appliance. We finish by running it and watching the flame pattern.

The termination screen deserves its own look

The outside end of a direct-vent system has a screened termination, and on an exposed home in this area it collects wind-blown grit, seed heads and, occasionally, an insect nest built over a summer of no use. A restricted termination starves the burner and can trip the safety on a well-maintained fireplace that has nothing else wrong with it. It takes two minutes to check and it is one of the first things we look at when a unit is shutting itself down.

Carbon monoxide, said plainly

A correctly working sealed direct-vent fireplace does not put combustion products into your house. But a cracked glass gasket, a disconnected vent joint in a chase, or a burner sooting badly can change that, and none of the three announces themselves. Have a working carbon monoxide alarm on every level of the house. That is not us selling anything, it is the cheapest safety device in the building.