Keep Your Family Warm and Safe—No Matter What

No, and it's worth being upfront about that. Despite genuinely cold winters—7,024 heating degree days, on par with Burlington, Vermont—most Mountain Top homes were built in the last 60 years as part of Wright Township's residential subdivisions, already piped for gas or set up for electric heat. Wood stoves show up mainly in older farmhouses on the edges of town, homes with an existing masonry chimney, or households specifically wanting backup heat that doesn't depend on PPL Electric staying on. If that's you, it's still a legitimate option—it's just not the default here the way it is in more rural parts of Luzerne County.

Installed costs in this area typically run $4,000 to $8,500, depending on whether you're inserting into an existing masonry fireplace or building a fresh Class A chimney run through a wall or roof. Because demand for wood systems is low locally, most dealers don't keep a wood stove floor model in Mountain Top itself—expect to order the unit through a regional hearth retailer, which adds a little lead time but doesn't change the underlying cost math much.

Yes. Wright Township, which covers Mountain Top, requires a building permit for any new wood-burning appliance installation, and the unit itself needs to be EPA 2020 NSPS certified. Contact the Wright Township zoning and codes office before work starts—most installers will pull this permit for you as part of the job. One upside here: Luzerne County has no air quality nonattainment designation, so unlike parts of the West Coast, you won't run into winter burn curtailment days.

Oak, hickory, maple, and cherry are the dominant hardwoods across the ridges and hollows surrounding town—all excellent, dense firewood with a long, hot burn once seasoned. Because there's no major public timberland right in Mountain Top, most homeowners buy split, seasoned cords from local firewood dealers and tree-removal outfits rather than cutting their own. The Pennsylvania Game Commission occasionally issues firewood removal permits on nearby State Game Lands, but that supply is inconsistent and shouldn't be your primary plan.

Most hearth retailers with wood stove inventory and NFI-certified installers are based down the ridge in the Wilkes-Barre and Scranton corridor rather than in Mountain Top itself—a direct reflection of how few local households request wood systems. That gap is exactly what Find My Fireplace exists to close. We don't stock or sell anything ourselves; we match you with a trusted regional dealer who still installs wood stoves correctly, pulls the Wright Township permit, and sizes the venting for your specific chimney or new Class A run.

Yes, and this is honestly the most common reason Mountain Top homeowners still ask about wood. A properly sized freestanding stove keeps producing heat with zero electricity, which matters here—the ridge-top exposure around Mountain Top means PPL Electric outages during ice storms and high wind events aren't rare. A mid-size stove rated for 1,500–2,000 square feet can keep a main living area livable through a multi-day outage even when a gas furnace's blower or an all-electric system is dead in the water.

For most homes here, gas wins on convenience—a large share of Wright Township housing is already piped for gas heat, and a direct-vent gas insert or fireplace lights instantly with none of the wood handling, storage, or chimney sweeping a stove requires. Wood tends to make sense in narrower situations: backup heat for outages, an older farmhouse with an existing masonry chimney already in place, or a property with cheap access to hardwood. If you're building new or don't already have a chimney, gas is almost always the simpler and far more common path around Mountain Top.

The CSIA recommends an annual inspection for any wood-burning appliance, and that holds regardless of how uncommon wood heat is locally. Because few chimney sweep companies focus specifically on wood stoves in Mountain Top, most of the technicians who do this work are based in Wilkes-Barre or Scranton and book up fast in early fall before the region's long, cold burning season—which given 7,024 heating degree days here runs steady from December through February.

Both are minority choices here for the same underlying reason: gas and electric infrastructure already covers most heating needs in Wright Township, so neither cordwood nor bagged pellets see much local demand. Regional pellet brands like Energex, Hamer, and Greene Team are sold locally as bagged fuel, but dedicated pellet stove installers are concentrated toward Wilkes-Barre and Scranton, same as wood dealers. The deciding factor is usually outage backup: a wood stove keeps running with zero electricity, while a pellet stove needs power for its auger and blower and will go dark in the same PPL Electric outage a wood stove would ride out.

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.

Yes—by creating a comfort zone. A furnace heats every square foot of the house just to warm the one room you're in; a gas fireplace on low burns roughly a sixth of the gas a typical furnace does. Set the furnace around 55–60 degrees as a baseline, then heat the rooms your family actually uses. Families who heat this way commonly save $20–$60 a month.