With gusts approach 60 MPH this was bound to happen: the pilot light on my gas fireplace got blown this afternoon by the gale-force blizzard winds!

If you have a gas fireplace or anything else with a pilot light and a nearby vent to the outside, you might want to check the pilot and make sure it's still lit.

This message brought to you as a public service by scooter and the Ad Council.

Good advice! Happened to us as well!

I guess the 7 ft snowbank right behind the 'chimney' protected ours! It's still on.

BTW, what would y'all estimate your monthly cost is for turning it on occasionally? Our kids love it but, I swear, the one month we used it quite a bit in the evenings, our bill was crazy.

If you have any of those little porchy areas or overhangs you can get to, you may want to try to clear them. I can see a couple behind me that have 2 feet + snow drifts against the French doors or windows, and that can't be good once this stuff starts melting.

I have one in the back that has about 3 feet of snow on it, with a snow drift covering up one of the BR windows. So yes, I am the crazy person who is hanging out the window pushing snow off the overhang. I could swear I heard it making creaking noises last night, so I rather you'll think I am crazy than have a section of my roof collapse.
I know, I know, I am probably worrying for nothing, but maybe this way I'll sleep tonight.

I'm a little worried for my neighbor's icicles...They're around 5' long or so and when they let go are going to either kill someone or do some serious damage to their deck.

It's pretty cheap to run... The logs in our house are are ~30,000 BTU input, so this is how the cost works out (at $1.04 per therm)..

30,000 / 1031 / 100 = .29 therms per hour (1031 is the number of BTUs per 100 therms, divide by 100 to get therms)

$1.04 * .29 = $0.30 per hour.

Not bad, really.

A bargain at twice the price. Nothing like sitting in my favorite chair by the artificial fire on a cold winter's night.

Sure doesn't feel that cheap when we run our fireplace....Bills always end up outrageous. :/

We dropped like a third off of our gas bill when we turned the pilot light off from our fireplace. Our bills were outrageous using the fireplace too, even just using it occasionally for like 15 minutes at a time.

I wonder if there's a difference between models and when the fireplaces were installed?

We are in a M&S Courtyard and also run our gas fireplace frequently without a big hit to the gas bill.

Strange. We mostly use our fireplace to heat our house (unless we plan to spend time in the rec-room b/c when we run the f/p that room becomes FREEZING - should have gotten a f/p down there - something we are thinking about doing next fall) and our bills have been:
Nov: $52.58
Dec: $49.06
Jan: $102.07
Feb: $93.46

Now it has been super cold so we have run the heat and the fireplace a lot over the last two months but still I wouldn't say $100 or under is outrageous. Plus our out-door grill is hooked to our gas line (jason preheats that for about 30 mins before he cooks on it) and we cook on that almost every evening - even in these winter months.