Gas Fireplace Won't Light After Summer? Check These Five Things First

It happens every October. The first cool evening rolls in, you grab the remote, and the fireplace does absolutely nothing.

Before you book a service call, run through these five checks. More often than not, the answer is one of the first three—and it'll cost you a few dollars, not a technician's visit.

One rule comes before everything else. If you smell gas—that rotten-egg smell—stop. Don't flip any switches or try to light anything. Leave the house and call your gas utility from outside. Everything below assumes there's no gas smell at all.

1. Replace Every Battery

Dead batteries cause more "broken" gas fireplaces than everything else combined. And many fireplaces hide batteries in more than one place.

There's the remote in your hand, of course. Many fireplaces also have a receiver tucked under or behind the unit, usually behind the lower front panel, and it runs on its own batteries. Plenty of newer models add a battery backup pack so the fireplace keeps working in a power outage. A receiver battery can drain quietly all summer without you ever noticing.

Replace every one of them, even the ones you think are fine. It costs a few dollars, and it settles the question for good.

2. Make Sure the Gas Is Actually On

Some people shut off the gas to the fireplace for the summer, then forget they did. Look for the shut-off valve behind the lower panel or on the gas line nearby. When the handle runs in line with the pipe, it's open. When it sits crossways, it's closed.

If gas to your whole house was off at any point this year—a utility shut-off, a new meter, a renovation—air may have crept into the line. It can take a little longer than usual for gas to reach the fireplace that first time.

3. Check the Switches and the Power

It sounds too obvious to matter, but it catches people every year. Many fireplaces have a wall switch, a switch on the unit itself, or both, and one of them may be off. If your fireplace plugs in for a fan or electronic ignition, make sure it's still plugged in and the outlet works.

4. See Whether the Pilot Is Lit

Gas fireplaces light in one of two ways, and it helps to know which one you have.

A standing pilot is a small flame that stays lit all the time, or all season. If it went out over the summer, or you turned it off to save gas, it needs relighting. The steps are printed in your owner's manual and often on a label behind the lower panel. Follow them exactly for your model.

Electronic ignition works differently. There's no flame at all until you turn the fireplace on, and then it lights the pilot itself, usually with a clicking sound. If it clicks and never lights, go back to checks one and two. Batteries or the gas supply are almost always the reason.

Not sure which kind you have? The manual will tell you. If the manual is long gone, the model number on the rating plate behind the lower panel is enough to look it up.

5. The Pilot Lights but Won't Stay Lit

This one is different, and it's where your own troubleshooting should end. If the pilot lights and then goes out, or the main burner won't come on even with a healthy pilot, the cause is usually one of two things. Either a sensor that proves the pilot is lit has worn out or gotten dirty, or the pilot itself is partly blocked. Believe it or not, spiders love the small tubes inside a gas fireplace, and a single summer web can be enough to disrupt the flame.

Cleaning or replacing those parts means working on the gas controls. That's a job for a qualified gas technician.

Book the Annual Service Anyway

Even when your fireplace lights on the first try, it's worth a yearly check. A technician will clean the pilot and burner, test the sensors, look at the venting, and make sure the logs sit where they belong. Badly placed logs are one of the most common causes of sooty glass. Fall is the natural time for that visit, before you're depending on the fireplace every night.

And if yours is old enough that it's a fight every single autumn, newer gas fireplaces and inserts are more efficient and far easier to live with. Many even run on battery backup through a power outage. If you're burning gas in an older, drafty unit, read whether your gas fireplace is quietly wasting money before winter sets in.