Outdoor Fireplace Installation and Repair in Spring Hill, FL

Outdoor Wood-Burning or Gas Fireplace

Outdoor fireplaces come in two kinds. An outdoor wood burning fireplace gives the real crackle and needs a chimney, room around it and someone to tend it. An outdoor gas fireplace lights with a switch and needs a gas supply run to it by a plumber or gas contractor, which is not work we do. Either one can be a factory-built unit made for outdoors or a masonry fireplace built on site.

For an outdoor gas fireplace installation, Florida's Fuel Gas code, section 635.1, says a permanently fixed outdoor decorative appliance is listed to ANSI Z21.97 and installed to the maker's instructions. Those instructions say whether it may go under a roof, how far from walls it sits and how it is vented. For wood, a factory-built outdoor unit carries its own listing; the manual for one outdoor wood fireplace says it is tested and listed to UL 127 and approved as a decorative fireplace, not a heat source.

Patio Fireplace Installation and Florida Rain

Water is the outdoor fireplace's real enemy. The same maker's manual says plainly that its outdoor unit sheds moderate amounts of water but is not waterproof. Where the fireplace stands against an exterior wall, the maker recommends building its chase outside the house's weather envelope, with a water seal where the platform meets the wall like the one used for an attached deck.

The manual also has the platform and hearth slope away from the house at 1/8 to 1/4 inch per foot, and, where water could collect under the unit, a drainage pan with tubes or weep holes. A masonry outdoor fireplace starts lower: section R1001.2 of the Florida Building Code, Residential, calls for a concrete or solid masonry footing at least 12 inches thick under a masonry fireplace, reaching 6 inches past it on every side.

A lanai fireplace adds a roof. The chimney then has to pass through that roof with the listed parts, the firestop and the storm collar shown in the maker's drawing, and end high enough above it to carry the smoke away from the space you are sitting in.

What Hernando County Publishes About Burning in the Yard

On a detached lot, the open yard tempts people to burn more than firewood. Hernando County Fire Rescue's burn page says the county does not issue burn permits; the Florida Forest Service does. It lists the setbacks for burning yard waste without a permit: at least 25 feet from your house, 50 feet from a road or street, and 150 feet from other occupied buildings, and not on rainy, foggy or windy days.

Those rules are written for yard-waste fires, and the page says nothing about outdoor fireplaces. What they do make clear is that an outdoor fireplace built close to the house is the wrong place to burn palm fronds and brush. Use it for clean, dry wood, as the maker intends.

• can you burn palm fronds: what the yard-waste rules allow
• outdoor fireplace against house: placing it near a wall
• do i need a permit for an outdoor fireplace: when the county gets involved

Outdoor Fireplace Repair

Outdoor fireplace repair usually means weather damage. On factory-built units we replace rusted caps, grates, screens and refractory panels with the maker's listed parts; that manual warns against installing any part that is not listed or approved for the unit, and against unvented gas logs in it. On masonry fireplaces we repair cracked block, failed stucco and loose firebrick, and rebuild a top that lets rain in.

When the fireplace smokes under a lanai roof, the fix is usually in the chimney height or the cap, not the fire. And when an old outdoor unit is rusted through, we price an honest replacement rather than patching metal that will not hold.

Planning an Outdoor Fireplace Installation

Spring Hill is unincorporated, so permits go through Hernando County, whose Development Services FAQ lists new construction, additions and decks among the work that needs a permit. Where your outdoor fireplace needs one, we pull it before work starts.

The free visit looks at the patio or lanai, the wall, the roof overhead and where water goes in a storm. Your written estimate names the unit or the masonry, the footing or platform, the drainage and the chimney. Your outdoor fireplace builder is an experienced crew from a local, family-owned business that is Proudly American. Indoor work is quoted through fireplace installation.