Two Gas Appliances in One West Valley City Room

The vented log set in an old masonry fireplace

Through the 1980s and 1990s a great many original wood-burning fireplaces here had a gas log set dropped into them. It is an open appliance: it burns in the room's air and exhausts up the existing chimney, exactly like the wood fire it replaced. Which means the damper has to be open, permanently, whenever it can be lit. Installers were supposed to fit a clamp or a stop so the damper cannot be closed. We routinely find those missing, removed during a sweep and never refitted, or defeated by a homeowner trying to stop a draft.

A gas fire burning with the damper shut vents combustion products into the room. Carbon monoxide from a gas appliance is odorless, and unlike a smoky wood fire it gives you no warning at all. If you have a log set, a working CO alarm on that floor is not optional, and we check the damper stop on every visit.

That conversion is the common case here precisely because West Valley City is a city on the piped gas main. Where a rural property might be running an appliance off a tank in the yard, nearly everything we open up in this part of the valley was plumbed off the street, converted from wood somewhere in the eighties or nineties, and run every winter since by an owner who was never told a damper clamp existed.

The sealed direct-vent insert

The modern alternative takes combustion air from outside through one pipe and exhausts through another, behind fixed glass. Nothing about the burn touches room air. These are safer and heat far better, and they are what we fit when a log set has reached the end of its life. Their service needs are different: the glass gasket, the vent seals, the pilot assembly and the flame pattern.

What an annual service covers

Burner and pilot cleaned, ports cleared, flame pattern checked against what the manufacturer specifies, thermopile output measured, gaskets and vent joints inspected, log placement corrected. Log position sounds cosmetic and is not: a log sitting in the flame path causes incomplete combustion, and incomplete combustion is where soot and carbon monoxide both come from.

Old valves and old parts

Gas valves, thermocouples and remote receivers for units discontinued twenty years ago range from cheap to unobtainable. We check before we quote. Where a part genuinely cannot be sourced we say so and price the alternative rather than leaving you waiting on an order that will never ship. Licensed and insured.