What does installing a wood-burning fireplace involve?

Installing a wood-burning fireplace is a building project, not an appliance swap. It means choosing the fireplace, finding a place where its chimney can rise straight through the house and out the roof, protecting everything combustible around it, getting a permit and having the finished system inspected. It is work for a licensed contractor, and most of what goes wrong later is decided at the planning stage.

Two ways to build one

A masonry fireplace is built on site from brick, block or stone, with its own foundation and chimney. A factory-built (prefabricated) fireplace is a tested metal firebox that arrives as a unit and is framed in, with a manufactured chimney that rises above it. A prefabricated unit is lighter and does not need the foundation a masonry fireplace does. Either way the same questions apply: where it goes, how the chimney is routed and what surrounds it.

The Fairfax County Fire and Rescue Department puts the safety side of a factory-made unit plainly: a factory-made fireplace should not be near combustible materials and should have adequate flame and heat barriers.^[2] The manufacturer's installation instructions are what define those clearances, and the industry guidance from DuraVent says the installation instructions provided by the fireplace manufacturer take precedence over general best practice.^[1]

Where the fireplace goes

The most common fireplace complaints, smoke in the room and cold air coming down the chimney, are mostly decided by location. DuraVent's best-practice paper says the most common fireplace problems are difficult and expensive to correct after the fireplace is installed, so the installation design stage is critical to success.^[1] Its main points for a house:

• the fireplace and chimney should be inside the heated part of the house, not in a chase on an outside wall, because a chimney that runs up the outside tends to cool and lose its draft^[1]
• the chimney should penetrate the highest part of the building envelope, which for most common house designs means the fireplace and chimney should be located on an interior wall rather than a perimeter wall^[1]
• factory-built fireplaces are normally approved for minimum system heights in the 14- to 15-foot range, and taller systems are preferable^[1]
• straight chimney runs are better than runs with elbows and offsets, and the supplied cap should never be replaced or left off for aesthetic or other reasons^[1]

Houses that are tightly built or have strong exhaust fans add a wrinkle. A big kitchen range fan can pull smoke back down a chimney, and DuraVent notes that one way to prevent that is to bring in a roughly equal amount of make-up air from outdoors.^[1] Glass doors help too, since spillage resistance is increased significantly when the main flow restriction is on the room side of the fire in the form of glass doors.^[1]

What the job actually includes

Every installation is different, but a complete scope usually covers:

• the fireplace unit, or the masonry firebox and smoke chamber
• the framing and enclosure around it, and the hearth and wall protection the manufacturer requires
• the chimney: manufactured chimney sections, firestops where it passes through floors and ceilings, roof flashing, a storm collar and a cap
• the roof opening and weatherproofing
• finish work such as the mantel, surround and facing
• the permit, the inspection and a final walk-through of how to operate it

The framing and roof work are why this is not a weekend project. They cut into the structure of the house and have to be done to the manufacturer's listing and the building code.

Permit and inspection

A permit is required when installing a prefabricated fireplace, according to Prince William County's fire department, citing the Virginia Uniform Statewide Building Code.^[3] Fairfax County's permit application lists a prefabricated fireplace and a prefabricated chimney among its items.^[4] The code requires an application for a permit to be made to the building official before work starts on a long list of activities, including mechanical systems and any equipment regulated by the USBC.^[5] The details of a particular job, and the fee, come from your own county or city building department. Whether you need a permit to install a fireplace or wood stove in Virginia goes through it.

Before you start: what a fireplace does and does not do

EPA is blunt that fireplaces are not an efficient means of burning wood, and that most of the heat from a fireplace goes out the chimney.^[6] If heat is the goal, a stove or an insert in an existing fireplace usually does more; how a wood stove heats a house explains the difference. If you want the fire for atmosphere, a well-planned fireplace is a good choice.

When to call a licensed pro

For all of it. Installing a fireplace involves framing, a chimney through the roof, fire clearances and a permit, so it is not a DIY job on Loclis. Virginia's Board for Contractors says that if the work you are considering is valued at $1,000 or more, a valid Virginia Contractor's License is required for the license category in which the contractor is to work,^[7] and that the contractor should apply for and obtain any necessary building permits, which should be spelled out in your contract.^[7] How to check a contractor's licence shows how to look one up. For a chimney that already exists, what a chimney liner is and why a fireplace smokes into the room are worth reading first.

Loclis lists DPOR-licensed businesses with their licence number and class. Browse chimney and fireplace services or see all chimney and fireplace answers. To price your own project, ask what a fireplace installation costs in Virginia.

Describe your fireplace project once and local businesses send written quotes.