Jim's Blog

Cost of running a gas fireplace

We just got a gas fireplace for the warmth (heating one room rather than the whole house), and for looks. Mostly I think that it was a splurge. Now the question is how much does it actually cost to run the fireplace? The spec lists BTU's / hour, but what does that actually mean? Time for some quick calculations.

The spec for the fireplace lists it as a max input of 26,000 BTU / hour. On some random prof's web page I found that 1 cubic meter – dry = 36,409 Btu when dealing with natural gas. Looking at the enbridge site, they show variable charges for gas supply charge (33.7551 ¢/m³) and delivery charge (max 15.3843 ¢/m³).

Doing the math:
volume consumed: 26,000 btu / hour * (1 m³ / 36,409 Btu) = 0.714109149 m³ / hour.
rate: (33.7551 ¢/m³ + 15.3843 ¢/m³) / (100 ¢ / 1 $) = 0.491394 $ / m³
total cost: (0.714109149 m³ / hour) * (0.491394 $ / m³) = 0.350908951 $ / hour.

So, at about 35 cents per hour, it's nice to have a gas fireplace and enjoy it.