Find your fireplace across the Kent coast.

All four fuels have a real place here, and the right call usually comes down to what's already running in the house and how remote your lot is. Wood is the backbone fuel across most of the region—sugar maple and yellow birch off local woodlots burn hot and long, and a modern EPA-equivalent stove will hold a fire through a -13.9°C night without much trouble. Where natural gas service reaches, it's an easy, low-maintenance option for a living-room fireplace or insert. Pellet stoves have a solid following too, especially with Groupe Savoie and Shaw Resources both distributing into the region, and they suit anyone who wants wood-like heat without the splitting and stacking. Electric fireplaces work well as a supplemental unit in a bedroom or basement, but on their own they're not built to be the primary heat source through a New Brunswick winter.

Yes. New wood stove and insert installs go through your municipal building department, and the installation itself needs to follow the CSA B365 code, which covers clearances, venting, and hearth protection. On top of the building permit, most home insurers in this region will require a WETT inspection before they'll insure the appliance—so even if your municipality doesn't flag it, your insurance company likely will. Gas installs need a licensed gas fitter and a separate gas-line permit where applicable. A trusted local dealer will typically walk you through both the permit and the WETT inspection as part of the project rather than leaving you to sort it out on your own.

WETT stands for Wood Energy Technology Transfer, and it's the certification standard insurance companies across Canada lean on to confirm a wood-burning appliance was installed to code and is safe to operate. In Kent, where wood heat is common enough that most households either burn it or have burned it, insurers routinely ask for a WETT inspection before they'll write or renew a homeowner's policy on a house with a wood stove, insert, or fireplace. It's a straightforward inspection covering clearances, chimney condition, and hearth protection against the CSA B365 code, and it's worth booking as soon as your stove goes in rather than waiting for your insurer to ask.

Natural gas service is available in parts of the region, mainly along the main corridors and larger communities, but it doesn't reach every property—plenty of homes on rural roads and woodlots still rely on propane, wood, or electric heat. Before you settle on a particular gas fireplace or insert, it's worth confirming with a local dealer whether your address sits on a served line or whether you'd be running on bottled or bulk propane instead. Either way, the appliance and venting requirements are similar; it's really a supply question more than an equipment one.

Costs depend mostly on fuel type and how much venting or gas-line work is involved. Wood stove and insert installs typically run $4,000-$9,000 CAD once CSA B365-compliant venting and a WETT inspection are factored in. Gas fireplaces, inserts, and stoves generally land around $4,500-$10,000 depending on whether a gas line needs to be run or extended. Pellet stove or insert installs usually come in around $4,000-$7,000. Electric fireplaces are the exception—$200-$3,000 CAD for the unit itself, plus a few hundred dollars in labor if it needs a dedicated circuit rather than a simple plug-in placement. The region and fuel pages above break these numbers down further with local dealer pricing.

Late summer through early fall is the window before demand tightens up. Once temperatures start dropping toward that -13.9°C average low, chimney sweeps, gas techs, and installers across the region get booked out fast, and a WETT inspection or gas hookup can take longer to schedule the closer you get to the first hard frost. If you're planning to cut your own firewood, DNRED district office permits and cutting seasons are worth sorting in spring or summer too, since sugar maple and yellow birch both need a proper season or more to dry down to a good moisture content before they'll burn clean.

Wrong question—and the industry's favorite way to confuse you. More BTUs isn't better if the fireplace cooks you out of the room you spent thousands to enjoy. Think in terms you can verify: how many square feet the unit heats, whether it's primary or backup heat, and whether you want it running overnight. Those three answers size a fireplace correctly every time.

In my own home, the room with the fireplace has never been the same—it became the social hub. Game nights, holidays, date nights after the kids are down: the fire is where the house gathers. There's a reason people in this industry joke that we're really in the romance and entertainment business. You won't wonder whether you'll use it; you'll wonder how the room worked before.

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.

An insert is a fireplace that slides into a pre-existing wood-burning fireplace—if you don't have one, there's nothing to insert it into. A zero-clearance fireplace is built into a framed wall, which makes it the answer for remodels and new construction. Simple test: existing masonry fireplace means insert; blank or framed wall means zero-clearance.