Straight Answers to the Questions We Hear All Day

It depends on the unit, the venting, and the finish work — which is exactly why every model on this site carries an instant estimate. Answer a few questions about your space and you'll see a real ballpark for the whole installed project, not just the box. Financing through Wells Fargo is available on any of it.

Not anymore — the federal energy-efficiency credit (25C) that covered qualifying wood and pellet stoves ended December 31, 2025. If a site is still advertising it, that page is out of date. The number that actually matters is the whole installed cost — the instant estimate shows yours in about five minutes, and financing can spread it out.

Honest answer: gas logs are the easy, beautiful upgrade if you love the open-fire look and mostly want ambiance — and we sell plenty. But in this climate an open firebox sends most of its heat up the flue. If you want the fireplace to actually warm the room, an insert seals the opening and multiplies the heat. We'll show you both and tell you plainly which fits how you live.

Because ventless units release their combustion byproducts into the room, and we're not comfortable putting that in your house. Every fireplace, stove, and insert we sell vents properly to the outdoors.

Start with the job. Heat that survives outages: wood first, then gas. Push-button daily convenience: gas. Biomass economy with thermostat comfort: pellet. Flame in a room with no flue: electric. Then come stand in front of your short list burning live at the showroom — ten minutes in front of the real thing beats a week of reading.

A fair number of our customers treat their wood stove as the primary heat source and keep the furnace as the backup — especially with today's long-burn models that hold a fire overnight. It comes down to your floor plan, the stove's size, and how the air moves. Bring a rough sketch of your layout to the showroom and we'll size it honestly.

Our upper-end line is Travis Industries — Fireplace Xtrordinair, Lopi, and DaVinci — alongside Majestic, Osburn, Hearthstone, Blaze King, Modern Flames, SimpliFire, Dimplex, Valor's Portrait series, and Enviro. More useful than the list: tell us the job, and we'll tell you which two or three models fit it.

No — grills and outdoor kitchens aren't what we do. Outdoor fire is: fire pit tables and custom fire pits with drop-in burners, with the gas line sized right the first time.

Roughly an hour\u2019s drive around Merrill — Lincoln, Marathon, Taylor, Langlade, Clark, Price, and Shawano counties, including Wausau and Medford. If you're near the edge of that map, call anyway; for the right project we stretch.

Once a year if you burn regularly — and always before the first fire of fall if the chimney sat all summer. Creosote builds quietly, and it's the fuel for the chimney fires nobody plans on. Kurt is CSIA-certified (#8723), the inspection is thorough, and you'll get a straight report.

Teardown-and-rebuild projects, no. Chimney repair, absolutely: tuck pointing, chimney caps, relining, chase covers, and flashing. If the chimney can be saved with honest repair work, that's exactly what we do.

Almost always, and usually quickly — it's most often the pilot assembly or thermocouple. Book a service visit and describe what it's doing; our technician arrives with the common parts on the truck. We service plenty of units we didn't sell.