Warm, Reliable Heat for Scranton's Coldest Nights.

Most gas fireplace and insert installations in Scranton run somewhere between $4,000 and $9,500, with the spread driven mainly by venting and gas line work. Converting an existing masonry fireplace in a Hill Section or Green Ridge home—common in this city's older housing stock—to a direct-vent gas insert with a liner run through the existing chimney tends to land on the lower-to-middle end, especially if a gas line already serves the house. New construction or a built-in unit in a home addition, where a fresh gas line and new venting have to be run through brick or plaster walls, pushes toward the higher end. Local dealers will quote a firm number after seeing your chimney and gas service in person.

Yes, and it's one of the more common projects in Scranton's older neighborhoods. Many rowhomes and Victorians here originally had coal grates or open masonry fireboxes that were later bricked up or converted to wood-burning, and few of those old chimneys are in shape for regular wood fires today. A gas insert solves this cleanly: a technician runs a stainless liner down your existing flue and installs a sealed, direct-vent unit in the old firebox opening. Typical cost runs $4,500 to $8,500 depending on chimney condition and whether new gas piping is needed from the meter. It preserves the original mantel and opening while giving you a heat source that actually works.

Either works, and which one applies mostly depends on where in Lackawanna County you live. UGI Utilities serves natural gas to most of the city of Scranton, so if your water heater or furnace already runs on gas, adding a fireplace is a simple tie-in. Homes farther out—in some parts of Clarks Summit, Dalton, or rural stretches of the county without a gas main nearby—typically run on propane from a local tank supplier. Nearly every gas fireplace or insert sold today can be configured for either fuel; your installer sets the correct orifice and regulator for whichever service you have.

For most models, yes. Nor'easters and ice storms occasionally knock out power across Lackawanna County for a day or more, and units with intermittent pilot ignition (IPI) include a battery backup—usually a set of AA batteries in the control compartment—that keeps the igniter working when PPL Electric service drops. The fireplace lights on demand off the batteries until power is restored, so the only maintenance is swapping the batteries occasionally so they're fresh when you need them. Valor fireplaces take a different approach: their millivolt pilot systems generate their own electricity through the thermocouple, so there's no battery to remember at all. Ask your dealer which ignition system a given model uses if outage backup matters to you.

A gas fireplace is a fully built-in unit framed into a wall—the standard choice for new construction or a room without an existing firebox. A gas insert is sized to slide into an existing masonry opening, which describes a large share of homes in Scranton's older neighborhoods, and it uses the existing chimney (fitted with a liner) as its vent path. A gas stove is a freestanding, cast-iron-style unit that sits on the floor on its own hearth pad, useful in a room with no chimney and no interior wall space for a built-in. For most Scranton homeowners working with a coal-era or wood-era firebox, an insert is the natural fit.

Yes. The City of Scranton's building and codes department requires a permit for new gas fireplace installations, and any new or modified gas line needs to be run by a licensed gas fitter and inspected before it's covered up. Most established hearth dealers in the area handle the permit application and schedule the inspection as part of the installation, so you're not coordinating separate trades yourself. If you're in an outlying Lackawanna County township on propane, your local municipality may have its own permitting process—your installer will know which office to file with.

Vented (direct-vent) units draw combustion air from outside and exhaust exhaust gases back outside through sealed pipe—they're the standard, code-friendly option almost everywhere, including Pennsylvania. Vent-free units burn gas directly into the room without exterior venting; they're legal in Pennsylvania under specific room-size and oxygen-sensor requirements, but they release moisture and combustion byproducts into your living space, which is a real consideration in an older, tightly-built rowhome where humidity and condensation can already be an issue on old plaster walls. For most Scranton installations, especially conversions into an existing masonry chimney that's already set up to vent outside, direct-vent is the more straightforward and more commonly installed choice.

Plan on an annual inspection, ideally in early fall before regular use starts. A technician checks the burner, pilot assembly, venting, and gas connections, and cleans the glass and interior—a much shorter job than a wood chimney sweep, but still important, since a cracked seal or blocked vent cap is the main safety risk with gas units. Local gas appliance service providers in the Scranton area typically charge $150 to $250 for this visit, and it's worth doing even on units that see light seasonal use.

Oak, hickory, maple, and cherry are all available in the woodlots around Lackawanna County, but wood and pellet stoves see little demand inside the city itself—Scranton's dense rowhome and twin-home neighborhoods leave little room for wood storage, and most of the housing stock has already converted from coal to gas or oil rather than to cordwood. There's also no dedicated public-land cutting permit infrastructure near the city the way there is in more rural parts of the state, so self-supplied firewood isn't the built-in advantage it is elsewhere. For city and inner-suburb homeowners, gas remains the practical default, with electric fireplaces filling in for condos, apartments, and rooms where any venting at all is impractical.

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.

If it was installed more than 15 years ago, probably. Older gas fireplaces keep a standing pilot light burning all the time, and that little flame can cost a couple hundred dollars a year. Newer models use pilot-on-demand ignition—the pilot lights only when you use the fireplace and goes out when you turn it off.

If you're putting a fire in your house on purpose, it's best to work with an expert. Unless you're genuinely experienced in framing, gas line, vent pipe, and the national code on clearances to combustibles, have a professional do it—and ideally the same company that sells you the fireplace, so warranty, service, and liability all live under one roof.

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.