Now hold on guys. Yes, caution is absolutely required here. However, I have a builder grade fireplace that looks very similar to the OP's unit. Mine is designed for either wood or gas. My unit has the same cheesy thin metal like stuff. If you look at the other pics on flicker, you will see that the unit has a full above roof chase and what appears to be a spark cap. I believe my unit has one of those huge 14" flues which is common for these units. This one doesn't seem to be that large, which makes me wonder if it is indeed a wood burner. The top of the front of the unit also has something that looks like sheet metal extending down into the firebox that is different from mine and that makes me think of gas. Remember, these are open fireplaces and don't really generate dramatic heat. My cheesy back fake bricks never got damaged in any way. So, two points: the 'fireplace' may indeed be designed for wood and you will need to check further; AND you aren't going to heat much with this thing either.

Everything said by akamaingrower is spot on except this: "I'm not sure what a fire starter pipe is, but if you mean a gas pipe, I'm pretty sure combining gas and wood burning in one fireplace would be a code violation, not to mention a very serious fire hazard." Gas starter pipes are the norm in most of the country; there's nothing illegal or hazardous about them. HOWEVER, you do need to make sure that the gas plumbing allows (heat can move back through the pipe if not plumbed properly) a simple switch to a starter pipe. You have a low-end pre-fab fireplace with a thin sheet metal firebox. You have a thinwall non-stainless air insulated chimney - these tend to rust the inner liner and cause problems. This will not be a good wood-burning fireplace. you can switch, but it's performance with wood won't be great. If you had a real masonry fireplace (with an appropriately high chimney) then the performance, safety, and durability would be much better; these are rarely installed by builders any more because the costs can be 10-50 times higher.

I had similar questions about my fireplace. We built 8 years ago and I paid the extra for the gas setup. Recently I wanted to use wood to help reduce heating costs. My fireplace is a Lennox unit with outside air supply and the blower setup. I figured that seeing as my house is open-concept the wood heat would work out well. I also wasnt sure what would need to be done to convert it. I wound up taking all my install paperwork to the company who installed it, as they are 5 minutes from my home. Their service manager talked with me and explained that I did in fact have a woodburning fireplace with a gas-log setup installed. He also told me that by code they have to install it with the proper chimney and tolerances for a wood fireplace. So all I had to do was remove the 'gas guts'. Ive been burning for a few months now and its SO nice:P Dave

We have purchased Peterson Real Fyre gas burner and logs from Hansen Wholesale for our last two homes. The logs came with fluffy black material that looks like embers (I think its rock wool with shiny bits embedded), and various other items that made it look more real. I've seen other fireplaces that have an option for LED lights, which are apparently designed to look like flames and embers. Our last home already had a gas line run to the pref-fab wood burning fireplace (for a fire starter), so it was easy to connect the gas logs as a replacement. Our current house has an old wood burning masonry fireplace, and we had to pay a plumber to install the the new gas line and gas logs (including a city permit). Bruce