Maintaining your fireplace is one of the most important things you can do. Keeping it clean is absolutely necessary. There is huge safety risk if you don't keep your fireplace in excellent condition.

The first thing you need to be aware of is that some animals like to live in your fire place and will try and build a nest in there. This is extremely dangerous as it will clog up your chimney when you go to start it. The smoke will often come back into your house.

This all means you should take and remove any sorts leaves, twigs and anything else that could have been put there by animals.

Every once in awhile you should clean the glass on a gas fireplace. This will allow you to see in to make sure everything is working correctly. This is also a good idea just in case there is any sort of residue or chemicals on the inside of the glass.

If your fireplace is new you should be sure to clean it as well. Often your installer will don this for you. But if they don't you could be in trouble. All the labels should be removed. You do not want these to catch on fire and distribute around the room.

Before you start your gas fireplace for the first time each year you should make sure all the major components are working correctly. This means checking any switches, fans, thermostats, and anything else that came with your fireplace that could cause some safety concerns.

Another good tip is to make sure you look over your user manual. You will find lots of tips in the manual that relates to your specific fireplace. Most of the things I mentioned here are very common, but there could be safety concerns that only relate to your specific model.

Maintaining your fireplace can be a fair amount of work. Just be sure to look things over carefully when you start it up for the first time each season.

Tyler Casselman runs the site Gas Fireplace Guide