Keep Your Family Warm and Safe—No Matter What

Because wood heat is uncommon here, fewer dealers specialize in it compared to gas, so pricing can vary more than in wood-heavy regions. Expect a full wood stove or insert installation—including a stainless steel liner for an existing masonry chimney, hearth pad, and labor—to run roughly $4,000 to $8,500 depending on the unit and whether your existing flue needs relining or rebuilding. Homes without an existing masonry chimney face higher costs since Class A chimney pipe and a full through-roof or through-wall venting system have to be built from scratch.

Yes. There's no ban on wood-burning appliances, but any new installation needs a permit through the Village of Arlington Heights Building Division, and the unit itself must meet current EPA 2020 NSPS emissions standards. Cook County doesn't carry the same winter burn-curtailment rules you'd see in a place like the Klamath Basin—Arlington Heights has no listed air quality nonattainment concerns—so once it's installed and permitted, you're free to burn without seasonal restrictions.

It comes down to density and infrastructure. Arlington Heights lots are small, homes are close together, and natural gas service reaches nearly every property in the village, so there was never much practical need for wood as a primary heat source the way there is in rural downstate Illinois or forested parts of the upper Midwest. Add in the lack of nearby public land for cutting your own firewood, and most homeowners here simply default to gas. Wood heat survives mainly as a secondary or ambiance choice tied to a home's existing fireplace.

If your Arlington Heights home was built before the 1980s, there's a decent chance you already have a working masonry fireplace and chimney. In that case, a wood insert is almost always the better move: it reuses your existing masonry and flue (relined with stainless steel), converts a drafty, inefficient open fireplace into a real heat source, and avoids the cost of building a new chimney chase. A freestanding wood stove only makes sense if you're heating a space with no existing fireplace at all, like a finished basement or detached space.

There's no national forest or state land close enough for a cutting permit, so local wood-burners buy seasoned cordwood from firewood delivery services and tree companies working across Cook County—often the same outfits handling storm cleanup and dead-ash removal. Oak, hickory, and maple are the most common species sold locally, and prices generally run $250 to $375 per cord delivered and stacked. Buy wood a season ahead if you can—properly seasoned hardwood (under 20% moisture) burns cleaner and produces far less creosote than green wood.

Most Arlington Heights homes are in the 1,500 to 2,800 square foot range, which typically calls for a medium-sized stove or insert rather than a large whole-home unit—especially since wood here is usually supplemental to an existing gas furnace rather than the sole heat source. An oversized stove in a smaller, well-insulated ranch or split-level will smolder and build up creosote fast; a properly sized medium unit will comfortably heat the room it's in and take real pressure off your furnace on cold nights. A local dealer can size this correctly during an in-home visit.

The CSIA recommends an annual inspection for any wood-burning appliance, and that holds true in Arlington Heights whether you're burning a few times a month for ambiance or running the insert regularly through a cold snap. Given that most local wood use is supplemental rather than daily, an inspection and sweep once a year—before the first fire of the season—is usually enough. If you're burning several nights a week all winter, ask your sweep whether a mid-season check makes sense.

For most Arlington Heights homeowners, yes—gas is the practical default here, and it's why gas fireplaces and inserts are far more common across the village than wood. Gas gives you instant, thermostat-controlled heat with no wood handling, no ash, and no chimney sweeping. Wood's real advantage is that a properly installed stove or insert works without electricity, which matters if a Commonwealth Edison outage hits during a winter storm. Some homeowners here install gas for daily convenience and keep an existing wood-burning fireplace or insert specifically as storm backup.

Look for NFI (National Fireplace Institute) certification or CSIA credentials specifically—because wood installs are less common in the Chicago suburbs, it's worth confirming a dealer regularly works with solid-fuel appliances rather than treating it as a rare side job. A qualified installer will handle the Village building permit, size the liner correctly for your existing flue, and verify clearances to combustibles. This is one area where it pays to ask directly about wood-specific experience rather than assuming every hearth dealer in the area installs both fuels equally.

An insert does two things: it seals the chimney completely, so you stop losing air you already paid to heat, and it radiates warmth into the room through the firebox and glass. Most add a heat-exchange fan that pulls cool room air underneath, wraps it around the hot firebox, and pushes it back out warm. Your home is more efficient before you've even lit the first fire.

Open fireplaces suck—literally. As the fire burns, it consumes air your furnace already paid to heat and pulls it out through the chimney, so the house is actually colder after the fire goes out than before you lit it. An insert fixes this: it seals the chimney, puts fixed glass across the front, and turns that hole in your house into a real heat source.

On average, a fireplace adds back to the home about the same amount you spent installing it. Add the monthly savings from heating the rooms you actually use instead of the whole house—often hundreds of dollars a year—and the value case is strong before you even count what a fire does for how your family uses the room.

It's a visit where a hearth professional measures your space, confirms the model you picked actually works in your home, and walks the specs—framing, gas line, venting, finish work—before anything is ordered. Some details you just can't know until you see the house. Never make a down payment without one; it's the single most-skipped step that burns buyers.