Fireplace installation in Clovis CA - the right unit for your house and fuel

Most people who call us have an old fireplace that eats wood and barely warms the room, or a spot in the house where they've always wanted one, and the first job is working out which of those three choices suits them. The price moves on whether we're building masonry from scratch or fitting an insert, which fuel it burns and what the chimney needs, and the schedule turns on the same things plus how long your unit takes to come in. If the chimney itself is cracked or crumbling, chimney repair may need to come first. I'll look at all of it on site, and the estimate gives you the figure for your house.

The first thing I ask is what fireplace you have now and what fuel you can actually get at the house, because those two answers decide between a new build and an insert. If your firebox is sound, an insert is usually the simpler road, and if there's nothing there or the old one is past saving, we build new. For a masonry fireplace our crew lays up the firebox, surround and chimney in brick or stone, placing it where the chimney can draw well and nothing that burns sits close to the heat. For an insert we clean out the old firebox, set the unit and connect it up. Either way we check the flue liner, the chimney's inner lining, as part of the job, because that's what carries smoke and heat out of your house.

A lot of fireplaces get a new face while we're there. We can wrap the surround and chimney breast in stone veneer, thin stone that gives you the look of a full stone fireplace without all the weight. Out in the yard, a fireplace often starts as a block core, built the same way we put up concrete block walls, and then gets faced in brick or stone.

If an old wood stove, wood insert or fireplace is still your main heat, look into California's Woodsmoke Reduction Program, because you may be eligible for help replacing it when that unit is uncertified. The program's draft guidelines, which are a few years old now, called for the replacement to be an electric heat pump, an electric stove heater, a certified pellet stove or a wood stove the program approves, put in by a professional, appropriately licensed stove installer and up to local fire and building codes. Check the current rules with the program before you pick a unit, and bring what you find to the estimate so we can plan the masonry around it.

Around Clovis we mostly see brick fireplaces in older houses that have burned a lot of wood, and factory-built boxes in newer ones. On places further out, there may be no gas at the street, so fuel really is the first question, and we run into the same mix on jobs in Old Fig Garden and Madera Acres.