Keep Your Family Warm and Safe—No Matter What

Not really, and we'd rather tell you that upfront than pretend otherwise. Natural gas is the default heating fuel in most New London homes, supplemented by grid electric service from We Energies or the New London Electric & Water Utility. Wood-burning fireplaces and stoves show up mostly in older homes near the Wolf and Embarrass rivers with existing masonry chimneys, and on rural or cabin-style properties outside city limits where firewood is easy to come by. It's a real option here, just not the mainstream one.

We don't have a New London-specific cost benchmark because wood installs are infrequent enough here that there isn't a well-established local price pattern the way there is in, say, Duluth or Bozeman. Regionally, a freestanding wood stove install with a new Class A chimney typically runs $4,000 to $8,500, and an insert into an existing masonry fireplace tends to land toward the lower half of that range. Because dealer volume for wood is thin in a town of New London's size (7,342 people), it's worth getting a quote from an installer who also covers the Appleton or Oshkosh area—they'll have more current wood-specific pricing than someone who mostly installs gas.

Waupaca County woodlots are dominated by oak, maple, birch, and aspen. Oak and maple are the workhorses for overnight burns—both deliver strong, long-lasting heat once seasoned properly (plan on at least a year of drying). Birch lights fast and burns hot but quicker than oak, making it a good shoulder-season wood. Aspen is common as a lower-density filler wood—it's easy to split and season but burns faster, so it's better mixed with oak or maple than used alone through a January cold snap.

Any new wood-burning appliance install should go through a building permit with the City of New London or Waupaca County, and the stove itself needs to meet current EPA 2020 NSPS emissions certification—that's a federal requirement regardless of location. Wisconsin doesn't have the kind of curtailment-period rules you see in Oregon's non-attainment areas (New London has no listed air quality concerns), so there's no burn-ban complexity to navigate. A local installer handling the job will typically pull the permit as part of the install.

There's no dedicated public-land cutting permit program tied specifically to New London the way there is near a national forest boundary, but Waupaca County manages county forestland, and the Wisconsin DNR issues firewood cutting permits on state land in the region. If you're planning to self-cut rather than buy cordwood, your best bet is calling the Waupaca County Forestry office directly to ask what's currently open for cutting and what the per-cord fee looks like this season.

You'd think so—a long, cold heating season with average winter lows around 8°F put New London in the same cold-climate tier as Minneapolis. In a lot of towns with that kind of heating load, wood is the default. Here, the combination of established natural gas service and reasonably priced electric rates (12.3¢/kWh through the municipal utility, 19.2¢/kWh through We Energies) has kept gas as the primary heat source for most homes. Where wood still earns its keep is as backup heat: a wood stove doesn't care if the power's out, which matters when a Wisconsin ice storm takes down lines for days.

Gas is the standard choice locally—direct-vent gas fireplaces and inserts are far more common in New London than wood-burning units, largely because gas service is already run to most homes for furnaces and water heaters. Electric heat, through either We Energies or the New London Electric & Water Utility, covers the rest. Wood tends to get added on top of one of those systems rather than replacing it—as a supplemental or emergency-heat option rather than the main event.

This is exactly the kind of situation Find My Fireplace exists for. Because New London's population (7,342) doesn't support a dedicated wood-hearth retailer the way a larger cold-climate market would, the right installer for your project may be based in Appleton, Oshkosh, or another nearby city but still service Waupaca County. We match you with a trusted local dealer who genuinely stocks and installs wood-burning appliances—not a big-box guess—and hand you a free planning packet so you know what to expect before you ever get a quote.

Gas wins on convenience and matches what's already built into most New London homes: instant on-off operation, no wood handling, and a gas utility infrastructure that's already there. Wood wins on one specific point that matters a lot in this climate—it keeps working when the power doesn't, which is a real consideration given how often Wisconsin winter storms threaten the grid. For most New London homeowners, gas is the practical primary system; wood makes the most sense as a deliberate backup or as a feature in a home that already has a legacy chimney to use.

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 many stoves, yes—a new fire needs extra air, and cracking the door a couple inches is how most stoves get it. But some modern stoves offer an automatic startup air system: engage it when you light, and timed air jets feed the fire for the first 20 minutes with the door fully shut, then close automatically. It's mechanical—like an egg timer, no electricity—and it means you can load it, light it, and walk away.

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.

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.