Pilot Light Installation

This service adds an ignition system to a fireplace that lacks a functioning one — a different job from fixing a failed part, because it's choosing and building the way the appliance will light. Pilot ignition is installed as a system: the pilot burner, the proving circuit, the igniter, and the interlock that ties them to the gas valve, selected and assembled to work together from the start. The standard held in one metro is the standard held in all of them.

Set against pilot-assembly-replacement, the line is clean: that service swaps a specific failed part on an ignition system that already exists and used to work — your fireplace had a pilot, it dropped out, the dead component is replaced. This service is for the case where there's no working ignition to repair: a unit built without one, one whose pilot was removed, or one getting a new ignition architecture entirely. Replacement renews; installation builds. The tell is simple — if there's nothing there to swap, this is the right service.

The first real decision is the architecture, because the two systems behave differently and the choice is permanent until the next conversion. A standing pilot burns a small flame continuously — a few dollars of gas a month, but simple, and crucially it still lights during a power outage because its thermopile generates its own millivolts. An electronic (intermittent pilot ignition, IPI) system sparks a pilot only on demand, saving that standing fuel, but it generally needs household power or a battery backup to fire. That trade-off is walked through against how you actually use the fireplace — outage operation, fuel cost, convenience — and the system sized to the answer rather than to whatever box is on the shelf.

Building the system means building the flame-proving interlock from scratch, and that's the safety core of the whole job. The proving circuit — thermocouple on a standing pilot, thermopile or flame-sense rod on an electronic system — is what tells the gas valve a flame is actually present; without a correctly built and aimed prove circuit, the valve has no way to know whether gas is burning or just flowing. The pilot is mounted so its flame fully envelops the sensor, the thermocouple/thermopile or igniter and module matched to the appliance valve, and the interlock wired so the valve can't hold gas open unless the flame proves. An electronic install also sets up the power or battery backup and the ignition module the architecture requires.

Because this is new ignition hardware tied into a live fuel train, the components must be matched and the whole thing commissioned, not just lit once. The valve is confirmed to accept the chosen ignition (some older millivolt valves can't take an IPI retrofit and would themselves need replacement — a boundary flagged before quoting), the pilot flame set for reliable, clean light-off, the gas connection leak-tested by manometer and bubble soap, and an ambient CO check run. Then it's lit repeatedly to confirm the new system proves and holds every time, not just on the first try.

The job closes by handing you a system you understand: how this ignition lights, what it does in an outage, and what its standing cost or battery upkeep is. Documented service here isn't a flame got going once — it's an ignition system designed for how you live with the fireplace, built to prove safe, and explained so you're never guessing why it did or didn't light.