A good friend of mine recently moved into her new duplex. Among all the other complaints she had, she couldn't find a thermostat for her built in gas fireplace. It turns out that all there was, was a conventional wall switch to turn the thing on and off. Huh? What?? I took the switch off and found that it had thermostat wire connected to it. I found a simple bimetal thermostat in my stash and now it cycles like its supposed to.

I mentioned this to a friend who did a number of gas fireplace installs and he replied "Oh yeah! That's the way it's done. I've done a hundred of these and they're all like that!" WHAT????? I went to visit a senior who just moved into a rental unit and she complained about the apartment being like an oven when she got home because she forgot to turn off the "switch" for the gas fireplace before she left.

Am I crazy or is this lack of a $20.00 thermostat pure insanity? I installed several free-standing gas stoves in my own home and using a wall switch instead of a thermostat is something I never even considered and I would tell anyone that even suggested it that they're nuts!

On top of not making any sense, it's also very dangerous. Someone leaves the house for a month and forgets to turn the thing off? There are so many redundant safety codes out there that generally don't make any sense and sometimes make things more dangerous , but it's perfectly okay to leave a gas heating appliance run unchecked for who knows how long! DUH!!!