Are Electric Fireplaces Worth the Price?

As times have progressed, so too has technology. And with those improvements and progressions in technology has come a substantial change in the standard of living. There are few aspects of life that are not touched by current technology in some way, shape or form. 

For instance, even our appliances are now “smart”. Smart technology has evolved to the point that we can control nearly everything in our homes through our smartphones with just a few taps. The level of control that we can now have over everything in our homes is absolutely unparalleled.

Just as important, these progressions in technology have allowed us to make better use of the resources in our environment as a way to loosen our dependence on those natural resources. All in all, these developments in technology have resulted in an unparalleled level of living regardless of class.

An excellent example of this is in the use of electric fireplaces. The name itself implies an expensive piece of technology that few would be able to afford. But there are more than a few reasons that owning an electric fireplace makes it more than worth the price.

Installation

If for nothing else, an electric fireplace is worth the price because of the simplicity and ease of installation. The installation of an electric fireplace can be as simple as one step: plug it in. Boom, you’re ready to go. It is that easy. 

Unlike traditional fireplaces, the electric variation doesn’t need venting or any real installation. The gas counterpart would need proper ventilation and would have to be on an outside wall that has a gas line. With the electric fireplace, you can plug it in wherever you want whenever you want, making it incredibly versatile to use.

That level of ease and very little maintenance makes it a winner without even taking anything else into consideration. How many other things are that easy to use? The quick answer is that there aren’t a ton of other things that are as easy to use and install as an electric fireplace.

Cost of operation

Surely it must cost an arm and a leg to use an electric fireplace for any amount of time given that it is so easy to install, right? Wrong. It turns out that using an electric fireplace is actually cheaper in most situations than it is using a traditional gas fireplace.

That’s right, even with a potentially hefty initial fee to purchase the unit, the cost of running heat 100% of the time comes out to around $0.16 per hour. That traditional gas fireplace, meanwhile, averages out to around $0.20 per hour depending on the BTUs or it could cost a heck of a lot more if you are paying for wood to burn instead.

In addition to being easy to use anywhere and everywhere, it is actually cheaper to run an electric fireplace than it is a gas fireplace. It doesn’t get much better than that as far as a product goes.

Portability

We addressed this a little bit earlier, but because an electric fireplace requires no installation of any sort and just needs to plug into an electrical outlet, you can move it any time that you like. If you find yourself getting tired of the current location of the electric fireplace, you can move it at a moment’s notice.

With a gas fireplace, this is not possible as they are built into the wall. Once it’s there, it’s there for good. That’s just not the case with an electric fireplace. Maximize your versatility and get the look you want when you want it with an electric fireplace.

Efficiency

What you might not have realized about traditional gas fireplaces is that they are very inefficient. A gas fireplace can lose in the neighborhood of 20% to 30% of its heat through the venting. An electric fireplace is far more efficient for a lot of reasons, but the most obvious is that it has no venting, so it doesn’t lose heat like an electric fireplace does.

When your fireplace is far more efficient, it takes less energy to heat your home, which means you save money in the long run. There are already a huge amount of benefits to an electric fireplace, but this just adds to the already growing pile of them.

Heat

Even though both gas and electric fireplaces can be controlled by a thermostat, a gas fireplace needs a constant source of fuel to create the fire which heats your home. With an electric fireplace, you don’t need the heat to stay on for the flame to stay lit.

And because of the efficiency as mentioned above, you can heat your home far easier than you might with a gas fireplace because the heat will not leak out through any vents.

Safety

Didn’t think that an electric fireplace could be any better than a gas fireplace with all of these positives? Guess again! It turns out that your electric fireplace is actually safer because it does not emit carbon monoxide, unlike the gas counterpart.

With the glass and metal not getting hot, either, you can be sure that your electric fireplace is as safe as it gets for dealing with actual fire.

Whereas your traditional gas fireplaces are only really meant to be used during the colder months of the year, an electric fireplace can be switched on and off at will, meaning that you can use it all year long. The initial cost of the fireplace is a little bit higher because you are getting a far superior unit.

As mentioned already, you save overall thanks to the efficiency of the electric fireplace. On average, it is believed that an electric fireplace will save you around $2,000 per year in the cost of usage. That price alone makes it worth buying an electric fireplace.

As you can see, electric fireplace is more than worth the initial up front cost and will save you a lot of money over time while being safer and infinitely more convenient to use.

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