Cleaning, Inspection, and Repair, Gas Fireplace Service, New Westminster
A cleaning and inspection visit from Eaton's Heating gets a New Westminster gas fireplace ready for the season, whether it is a 1990s unit in a Quayside apartment, an insert in a Queen's Park brick fireplace, or a builder fireplace in a Queensborough townhome. If the fireplace will not light from the switch, the pilot will not stay lit, the glass has gone hazy, the fan has gotten loud, or the flame is weak or leaving soot on the glass, the technician finds the cause on the same visit and quotes the repair before doing it. We service every residential brand and are a Regency authorized dealer. Same-day service available.
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A gas fireplace that has not been opened in a few years has dust on the burner, a film on the inside of the glass, and a pilot flame that has drifted from where it should be. None of that shows until the first cold evening, when the fireplace will not light or lights with a weak flame. A cleaning and inspection visit takes care of that: the fireplace is opened up, cleaned, checked, and lit. When something is wrong beyond cleaning, it is almost always one of a short list: the thermopile or thermocouple, the small probes in the pilot flame that make the current the gas valve needs; the pilot assembly itself; the blower; or the glass. Our technician finds which one during the visit, and the gas fireplace repair is quoted before it starts.
New Westminster has something no other city we serve has: the Quayside towers along the river and the Uptown towers near Sixth and Sixth were built between 1988 and the late 1990s with a gas fireplace in nearly every living room. Those units are now 30 years old and they fail in the same few ways. The thermopile weakens, so the wall switch does nothing while the pilot still burns. The pilot assembly clogs, so the pilot will not stay lit. The fan gets loud, and the glass hazes over. All of it is repairable. The surrounds come off from the front and the parts are common, so a visit in an apartment usually ends with the fireplace running the same day.
In the houses, Queen's Park, Sapperton, and the West End have gas inserts set into the original brick fireplace openings. We service the insert; the brick, the hearth, and the flue are not touched. Queensborough and Victoria Hill townhomes have the builder fireplaces from the 2000s. Our New Westminster HVAC services page lists the rest of what we do for homes in these neighbourhoods. Eaton's Heating is TSBC licensed (LGA0200006), a Home Performance Contractor Network member, and holds a 4.9 rating across 400-plus Google reviews. We are also a Regency authorized dealer, which matters on the day a fireplace is past repair.
That day does not come often. A 1990 fireplace with a new thermopile and a clean pilot runs the way it did when the building opened, and a Regency or Valor insert from 2005 with a new blower has years left. The reasons a fireplace gets replaced instead of repaired are a firebox rusted through, a burner or valve the manufacturer no longer makes, or an owner who wants a different look. When one of those is the case, the technician says so, and gas fireplace installation in New Westminster covers what a replacement into the same opening involves. Everything else is a repair, quoted before it starts.
Most gas fireplaces in New Westminster do not use household electricity to light. They run on a millivolt system: the pilot flame heats a thermopile, the thermopile makes a tiny electrical current, and that current runs through the wall switch or remote to the gas valve. Flip the switch, the circuit closes, the valve opens, the burner lights. It works without power, which is why the fireplace still runs in an outage. It also means the whole thing depends on a current so small that a weak thermopile, a corroded switch, or a loose wire at the valve is enough to stop it.
That is the fault behind one of the most common fireplace calls we get in New Westminster: the pilot is lit, the switch does nothing, and the burner will light if a match is held to it. The thermopile is the usual answer, and it is on the truck. If the thermopile is fine, the switch or its wiring is next, and on a remote-controlled unit, the receiver. Which one it is comes out of the visit, and the repair is quoted before it starts. None of these are big repairs, and a fireplace that lights from the switch again has usually just had its first new thermopile in 30 years.
Licensed Gas Contractor (LGA0200006)
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Certified Fireplace Dealer
Have a question about your HVAC system? Book an appointment using the form below, or call (604) 535-8434 for immediate help.
No, and the fix is usually small. A pilot that stays lit means the gas is on and the thermocouple is working. A switch that does nothing means the thermopile, the switch, or the wiring between them is not passing enough current to open the valve. The thermopile is the most common cause on fireplaces from the 1990s, and it is quoted as its own repair once the technician has confirmed it.
A dusty smell for the first hour is normal and is the summer's dust burning off the burner and the logs. A cleaning before the season removes most of it. A smell of gas is different and is never normal: turn the fireplace off at the switch and call us. A sooty or sharp smell while the fireplace runs, or black marks on the glass, points to a burner that needs cleaning or logs that have been put back in the wrong position, and both are part of the visit.
Yes. The fan, or blower, sits under the firebox and pushes room air across the back of it, and it is separate from the fire, so the fireplace still heats without it. A blower that has gotten loud has dust in the fan wheel or a worn bearing, and one that has stopped is usually the motor or the speed control. Blower motors are ordered for your model rather than carried, so the technician confirms the part on the visit and the swap is done when it arrives.
Yes. The inserts in Queen's Park and Sapperton houses are serviced from the front: the surround comes off and the unit is cleaned and inspected. The masonry, the hearth, and the flue are not part of the visit, and we do not do work on the brick itself.
Yes, and in New Westminster it is a regular part of our fireplace work. The gas fireplaces in the Quayside, Uptown, and Sapperton buildings are residential units like any other, and the cleaning, inspection, and repairs are the same. Tell us the building and the floor when you book so the technician arrives with the right parts.
Yes. Fireplace glass is a ceramic panel cut to your model, so it is made to order and takes a few days to arrive. A crack means the glass is replaced before the fireplace runs again. A white haze that cleaning will not remove means the glass is etched from years of the deposits that a gas flame leaves, and a new panel is the only fix. The technician measures and orders it on the visit.
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