Will my gas fireplace work in a power outage?

It depends on the fireplace. Many gas fireplaces rely on a fan to move heat and on house power for their ignition, so when the power goes out, so does the fire. A radiant Valor is built the other way round: it heats without a fan, its ignition runs on batteries, and it asks nothing of a wall socket, so it lights and keeps warming the room through a power cut. If you are not sure which kind you own, the model name on the rating plate inside the lower front will tell us.

Which Valor fireplaces keep working without power?

The radiant models: the H3 and the rest of the H Series, the L Series and LX2, the Horizon, the Portrait and P2, the G3.5 and the other G Series inserts, and the Madrona and President stoves. Where a Valor has an optional fan, the fan stops when the power does, and the fire carries on without it.

How much of the house will it heat?

The room it sits in, and usually the rooms that open off it. A radiant fireplace warms the people and the surfaces in front of it rather than blowing warm air through ducts, so in an outage it makes one good room to gather in rather than heating the whole house. The larger models, such as the H5, H6 and L3, reach further than the compact ones; we match the fireplace to the room when we measure.

What should I check before the first winter storm?

The batteries. Every Valor runs on a set in the remote and a set in the receiver beside the firebox, and fresh ones in the autumn save a cold evening of hunting for AAs by torchlight. Our battery guide says which ones go where, and the remote guide explains the beeps.

Does a wood stove work in a power outage too?

Yes, and it is the other fire that does. A certified wood stove or insert needs nothing from the grid at all. In Metro Vancouver it must be a certified appliance and, inside the urban area, registered under Bylaw 1303; Whistler has its own permit. Our wood-burning stoves page and the Whistler page cover the rules.

A Fireplace That Works When the Power Goes Out

Every November the first big storm comes through, the trees on the North Shore lean into it, and somewhere a line comes down. The furnace stops, the heat pump stops, and in a great many living rooms the gas fireplace stops with them. It does not have to. A radiant Valor keeps burning, and this is the season to know why.

What goes out when the power goes out

Most of what heats a modern house needs electricity, even when the fuel is gas. A furnace needs its blower; a heat pump is electric from end to end; and a good many gas fireplaces depend on a fan to move their heat into the room and on house power to light the pilot. When the grid fails, those fireplaces go dark and the room goes cold in the hour it takes to notice.

A Valor is built the other way round. The radiant models heat the way sunlight does, straight off the glass and onto the people and the furniture in front of it, with no fan to run. The ignition runs on batteries, a set in the remote and a set in a receiver beside the firebox, and nothing about the fire asks for a wall socket. Valor calls it No Power, No Problem, and on a dark evening in a windstorm it is exactly that: a press of the remote, and the room has a fire in it.

Which Valor for which home

The whole radiant range does this, so the question is the room rather than the storm. In a condominium or a strata townhouse the H3 is the one: a slim retrofit that often connects to the building’s existing vent, and in a tower on a winter night it is the only warm room on the floor. The rest of the H Series scales the same fire up to the large-format H6, and the H5 and H6 add a second heat exchanger that moves warm air by convection, still without a fan.

For the long wall of a view house or a Whistler great room, the L Series and the three-sided LX2 carry HeatShift™, which keeps the wall above cool enough for a television, and keep heating straight through a cut. For the old masonry fireplace that has stood cold for years, the G3.5 and its G Series siblings turn the chimney you already have into a sealed, battery-lit heater. And for the room with no chimney at all, the Madrona and President stoves need only a floor and a vent. Every one of them is on our Valor page.

Valor H3 gas fireplace burning in a Vancouver condominium with the harbour and the city lights beyond the window

Whistler, and the house that is empty between visits

A second home in the mountains loses power more often than a house in the city, and it is usually empty when it happens. A fire that lights from a remote and needs nothing from the grid suits that house well: the first thing you do on a Friday night is press a button, and the room is warm before the bags are in. We are in Whistler regularly, and our Valor fireplaces for Whistler homes page goes through the models that suit a chalet, a townhouse and a strata unit.

Before the first storm

Two small jobs. Put fresh batteries in the remote and the receiver, because the storm is the wrong night to discover they are flat; our October battery guide says which ones go where, and the remote guide explains what the beeps mean. Then, if your fireplace was installed by Maxwell Fireplace and has not been serviced in a while, book it through Customer Care before the season, not during it.

The other fire that keeps going without the grid is a wood stove, and for many of the homes we work in it is the right answer. It has rules of its own in Metro Vancouver and a permit of its own in Whistler, and our wood-burning stoves page covers them plainly.

Our part

A fireplace that works in an outage is only useful if it is in the right room, aimed at where people actually sit, with a vent run that was planned rather than improvised. That is the work of Maxwell Fireplace: choosing the model and the finish with you in our North Vancouver showroom, where the Valors are burning, then measuring, planning the vent, pulling the permit and installing it ourselves, with the care that comes after. It is what we mean by a Creative FireSpace™, and it is why the fire is still there when the lights are not.

Thinking about a fireplace before winter? Visit the showroom at 1380 Pemberton Ave, North Vancouver, Tuesday to Saturday, 10 am to 4 pm, or call 604-987-1293.