Fireplace installation in Eastvale CA - a fire that suits the home you already have

An insert works a lot like a free-standing wood stove that fits inside your old fireplace, so it's the usual pick when you've got a fireplace you've stopped using. The price moves with the unit you pick, the venting it needs and how much framing and surround work goes around it, and a surround in stone veneer adds to it. The schedule turns on the same things, since dropping an insert into a sound firebox is quicker than opening a wall for a new one. You get your own figure in the written estimate I send after I've looked at your house.

First thing I ask is whether you've got a masonry fireplace, a factory-built one or no chimney at all, because that answer decides which options make sense for your home. Then I look over the firebox, the chimney or the wall where a vent would go, and if something's cracked or not fit for a new unit, I'll tell you at that first visit instead of setting it in a bad box. On the job we fit the insert or frame the opening, run the liner or the vent, keep the air space the vent maker's instructions call for between the pipe and anything that can burn, then build the hearth and surround and clean up. One vent maker's instructions name a missed gap like that as a major cause of vent fires, so it's the step we don't rush.

Most fireplaces need a finished face once the unit is in, so we often wrap the surround with stone veneer installation, which gives a plain wall the look of stone. When a raised hearth or a chase has to be built out from the wall, we lay it up the same way we build our concrete block walls.

Eastvale's Building Safety team issues building permits and does the inspections on home projects, and I won't guess whether your fireplace job needs one, so the place to ask is the city's Building Safety team. We check with the city or county building office about your job and handle the permit paperwork when one's needed, before work starts. The city also describes Eastvale as sitting in a liquefaction area and a large seismic zone, so on a new hearth or surround we pay close attention to how the masonry ties to the house instead of just stacking it against the wall.

Wood is the other local question. The South Coast air district's wood-burning rule limits fine-particle smoke from home fires, bans burning anything not meant as fuel and requires you to stop burning wood on No-Burn days from the start of November through the end of February, right when you'd most want a fire. Eastvale falls inside the district, so if you're weighing a wood insert against gas, count those days. We're based in Eastvale and work in many of the cities around it, and the same rule applies on fireplace jobs in Jurupa Valley and Norco.