We recently purchased a house built about 15 years ago that included a gas fireplace. Even though I live where wood is plentiful and cheap, I prefer a gas fireplace because it’s less messy. We have natural gas supplied to the house from the town. I noticed a few days ago that the fireplace has a fairly large pilot light that is always lit whether the fireplace is “on” or not. What I can’t figure out is why there is a pilot light at all. Since the fireplace is rarely used the pilot light is on 24 hours a day, 7 days a week for no reason at all.
Recently when the pilot light on my water heater went out I noticed it had a piezo-electric igniter to relight it. As I understand it, when the pilot light goes out the gas is automatically shut off to the water heater. Why wouldn’t they use an electric igniter on the fireplace so the gas is only running when it needs to be? What am I missing here? Is it a safety issue? Is it better just to have a pilot light running all of the time?
I used to turn off the pilot light on my furnace in the summer. Someone told me it is better to leave it on to prevent condensation. I have no idea if that is true.
Cost. That electronic igniter is much more costly than a plain old pilot light. We just costed out a gas fireplace insert to replace the one you’re talking about. It was pretty cheap until I wanted to upgrade from the standard pilot light to the electronic version. Then it went from “pretty cheap” to over $1,000.
Our gas fireplace has a “match light” ignition. That is, when we want to use it, we turn the gas on to a low setting and immediately use a lit fireplace match to ignite it.
Weigh this against the fuel cost for a pilot light. If it’s on 24/7/365, it might cost anywhere from $35-$148, or it might cost anywhere from $219-$657. It depends on who is doing the estimating and what fuel is being used. Since OP is on natural gas, it’s probably closer to those lower figures, i.e. $35-$219 per year.
You can trim this if you turn off the PL when the fireplace won’t be used for an extended period, but of course the warmer part of the year has “fuzzy edges” where you just want to use the fireplace less often (as opposed to suddenly transitioning from “use it a lot” to “don’t use it at all”). That may make it inconvenient to turn the PL on/off a lot.
If trying to decide between installing a PL fireplace and an electronic-ignition fireplace, $219 per year would mean roughly a five-year payback for getting the more expensive model. But if only $35 per year, then the payback is more like 30 years, difficult to justify. Manufacturer surely knows their PL gas flow rates and can estimate ongoing PL operating costs for their new models.
Electric igniters are a ‘new invention’. (40 or 50 years ago). The continuous pilot light was the traditional method, and a lot of people stuck with tradition.
Two reasons: the problem of installing electricity (not a real problem if there is a fan in the same place), and the fact that a gas heater will continue to work even when the electricity goes off (unless it also requires a fan).
New installations with fans always get electric igniters. Old installations with no fans, never. My hot water system runs a pilot light (which blows out every 5-10 years on a very windy day): my ducted heating has electric ignition.
I typically light the pilot in October and leave it on until April, although I’ve gone through seasons without lighting it. I find it a bit fiddly to light as you have to turn the gas knob to a set position, hold it in, and press the piezo igniter repeatedly. If I’m down on the ground doing this, it’s hard to see the pilot so I usually take 2-3 attempts.