Find your fireplace across Restigouche.

All four fuels see real use here, and the right pick depends more on where you sit in the region than on any single 'best' answer. Wood is the backbone fuel inland and in rural areas—sugar maple and yellow birch both burn hot and long, and a lot of households already have a Crown land cutting permit through New Brunswick Natural Resources district offices, which keeps the fuel cost low. Gas is a solid option if you're in the Campbellton-Dalhousie corridor where Liberty Utilities runs mains service; further out, gas usually means propane instead. Pellet stoves have a genuine following too, with Groupe Savoie and Shaw Resources both supplying the region, and they're an easier day-to-day fuel if you don't want to split and stack wood. Electric fireplaces are supplemental almost everywhere here—they're not built to carry a home through winter lows near -17.5°C on their own, but they're a good fit for a bedroom, a basement, or a second living space in a home already heated by wood or gas.

You'll need a building permit from your municipal building department—whichever town you're in, from Campbellton to Dalhousie to the smaller municipalities along the bay—and the install itself has to meet the CSA B365 installation code. On top of that, most home insurers in New Brunswick won't cover a wood stove or insert without a WETT inspection confirming the clearances and venting are done correctly, so it's worth budgeting for that even though it's not strictly a government requirement. Gas installs need a licensed gas fitter and a separate permit for any new gas line. The retailers we help homeowners find in Restigouche generally handle the permit paperwork and can point you to a WETT inspector as part of the project.

It's a genuine mix. Liberty Utilities runs mains natural gas through parts of the Campbellton-Dalhousie corridor, so homes there can install a true gas fireplace or insert tied into the utility line. Once you're further inland toward Kedgwick or in the smaller communities off the main corridor, gas service typically doesn't reach, and a 'gas fireplace' there almost always means a propane unit with a tank on the property instead. Neither option is second-best—propane units perform identically to natural gas fireplaces once installed—but it does change your ongoing fuel logistics, so it's worth confirming which situation your address falls into before you start comparing units.

Costs shift with fuel type and how much venting or gas-line work is involved. Wood stove or insert installs typically run $4,000-$9,000 CAD, including CSA B365-compliant venting, with a WETT inspection usually adding a few hundred dollars on top. Gas fireplaces and inserts run roughly $4,500-$10,500, more if you're extending a gas line out from the Liberty Utilities main or setting up a new propane tank. Pellet stove or insert installs generally land at $4,500-$7,500. Electric fireplaces are the outlier—$200-$3,000 for the unit itself, plus $400-$1,200 in labour if you're wiring in a built-in rather than plugging in a freestanding unit. The region and fuel pages above break these numbers down further with local retailer pricing.

A lot of households here do—Crown land cutting permits through New Brunswick Natural Resources (DNRED) district offices are common and keep firewood costs down considerably, which is part of why wood heat is so entrenched in this region. It does affect stove choice in one practical way: if you're burning self-cut sugar maple, yellow birch, or red maple that hasn't seasoned a full year, you'll want a stove with a firebox and air control forgiving enough to handle wood that's a bit wetter than kiln-dried cordwood. A good local dealer will ask about your wood source before recommending a model, since a catalytic stove tuned for dry hardwood can smoulder and creosote up fast if it's fed unseasoned fuel.

Late summer through early fall, before the first real cold snap off Chaleur Bay. Installers and chimney sweeps across Restigouche get busy fast once temperatures start dropping toward that -17.5°C average low, and if your install needs a WETT inspection or a new gas line permit through your municipal building department, those steps take longer than most homeowners expect. Booking in August or September also means you're not without heat if a part needs to be special-ordered—vent kits and certain stove models aren't always sitting on a shelf in a region this size, and a two-week wait feels very different in November than it does in July.

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.

Do two things today: snap a photo of the wall or fireplace you want to transform, and take a tape measure to the space—width, height, depth. Those two artifacts answer most of a hearth professional's first questions. Then settle fuel (wood, gas, pellet, or electric) and set a realistic budget: $3,900–$5,500 covers fireplace, vent, and basic install for most homes.

For an average home—covering the fireplace, the vent pipe, and basic installation—a budget between $3,900 and $5,500 gives you a lot of options across wood, gas, and pellet. By the time you add finish work, gas line, and electrical, the average complete installation lands between $5,000 and $12,000 all-in. In a remodel or new build, a good rule is to put about 2.5% of the total project cost toward the fireplace.