Dave Martindale wrote:

We've lived in houses with proper wood fireplaces and liked them. But
I'm happy with the Valor gas units. Except for the downdraft problem,
you just turn them on and push a button to ignite the flame, and they
operate unattended indefinitely. No splitting wood, no cleaning up the
ash afterward. They're pretty to look at (the main flame burns blue as
you'd expect from natural gas, but there are also decorative flames set
rich so you get nice yellow flames up through the fake logs). And they
heat the room quite well because of the built-in heat exchanger.

I also like the fact that I can heat a few rooms of the house even when
electricity is out. We've had a few windstorms lately that have
disrupted power for some customers for days at a time. The Valor units
need nothing more than a natural gas supply to work: the igniter uses a
piezo sparker with a button, the safety systems work off the millivolts
of electricity produced by the thermocouple, the heat exhanger uses
convection (no fan) and the flue draft is natural.

If I had a natural gas line, that is the way I would have gone. As far
as eliminating a heat source when power is out, I have a back-up
generator which keeps oil furnace on line. The incident that finally
precipitated me getting a generator was a cold day's power outage where
house was down to 40 deg. F in spite of having both fireplaces burning.

The fan on the roof solution is pricey - over $1.000 - and I have good
draft too. I always started a wood fire by burning paper first. Maybe
you can get yours started by using a separate propane torch first.

Frank