Gas fireplace installation and service
We install, service and repair gas fireplaces and inserts across Metro Vancouver. Installation typically runs $4,000–$9,000 including unit, gas line, venting and permit.
⚠️ Servicing a gas fireplace is a combustion safety check, not a clean. If someone was in and out in fifteen minutes having wiped the glass, that wasn't a service.
Installation
Insert into an existing fireplace — $3,500–$7,000. The cheapest route, because the chimney provides the venting chase with a new liner. Direct-vent unit in a new location — $4,500–$8,000. Vents horizontally through an exterior wall. Zero-clearance unit — $5,000–$9,000. Freestanding stove — $4,000–$7,500. Outdoor fire feature — $3,000–$8,000.
gas line distance · venting route · electrical for fan and controls · the permit.
⚠️ Finishing is usually a separate trade. Surround, mantel, hearth and tile are typically not in a gas fitting quote. Check that when comparing.
The nine-point annual service
1. Combustion analysis — measuring what the appliance produces, including carbon monoxide in the flue. The most important item and the one most often skipped. 2. Glass seal and gasket inspection. ⚠️ On a direct-vent unit the glass is part of the sealed combustion chamber, not decoration. A degraded gasket lets combustion products into the room, and it's invisible until checked. 3. Venting inspection — the run and the exterior termination. Blockages, corrosion, bird nests, secure joints. 4. Burner clean and inspection. A yellow or lazy flame where it should be blue is a combustion signal. 5. Pilot assembly and thermocouple — cleaned and tested. Spider webs in pilot orifices are genuinely common. 6. Gas pressure check against specification. 7. Logs, media and ember bed repositioned. ⚠️ Not cosmetic — logs out of position disrupt the flame pattern and cause sooting. 8. Fan, controls and remote tested. 9. Written report with readings — your record, and what a manufacturer wants on a warranty claim.
Signs yours needs attention now
Sooting on the glass or surround · a yellow or lazy flame · a smell beyond the first burn of the season · a pilot that won't stay lit (usually the thermocouple) · film on the inside of the glass that doesn't clear · more than a year since it was serviced
⚠️ If your CO alarm sounds: leave the building and call 911 from outside. Don't investigate.
Older units
A gas insert fitted in the 1990s is now around thirty years old, and parts availability becomes the constraint before the unit fails.
⚠️ This is concentrated in specific housing: Burnaby Heights and Capitol Hill, Austin Heights and Maillardville, and the 1980s–90s Tri-Cities subdivisions where fireplaces were fitted as original equipment and are now ageing across whole neighbourhoods at once.
If yours is that age and something significant fails, replacement is usually the answer — and the existing chimney or chase is generally reusable with a new liner, which keeps the cost well below a fresh installation.
When to book servicing
Late August to October, before heating season. Anything found can be fixed while you're not relying on it, and if the unit is at end of life you have time to plan.
Our scope: Gas appliances up to 120 kW (about 400,000 BTU/h) input. Every residential gas fireplace is comfortably inside this.
What it costs
Annual service $199 flat · insert installation $3,500–$7,000 · new direct-vent installation $4,500–$8,000
⚠️ If a service price is well below market, ask whether combustion analysis and venting inspection are included.
