Help. What are these for?

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Heidilg

New Member
May 24, 2022
2
Texas
We recently bought a lake house that had a fireplace. When we got our new roof we noticed it was never vented out so we tore the wall out to see what was there and how to vent it and we found all these on the top instead of just one place for a pipe like ours at home. Does anyone know what they all are for and how to vent it out?

[Hearth.com] Help. What are these for?
 
They look like cookie cutters. Well, they're round, so I guess they're for biscuits.
 
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I've never seen anything like that on a fireplace. Do you know what tge brand is? Maybe the owners manual will tell.
 
[Hearth.com] Help. What are these for?

It’s the top of the fireplace. I don’t see a brand or a manual. It was taken by the previous owner out of a house that was being torn down. There are a lot of different levers that I assume open and close these but we do not know how this is supposed to be vented out of the roof safely.
 
I'm taking that to be a triple wall central flue - possibly with the damper closed, or some sort of knock-out which was never opened? The other vents look to be some sort of 'heatilator' style set-up where air could be pulled around the firebox, heated and discharged to the room or a duct system.

Heatilator is an actual brand https://www.heatilator.com/ though looks like this would be pretty old unit. Seems like a lot of the newer units are geared to put heat right into the room - not so much into a ducting system. Heatilator has a page of manuals, but unless you have some sort of nameplate, it would just be a one-by-one search to see if any match. https://www.heatilator.com/owner-support/install-and-owners-manuals

Also, I guess (hope) they were running it as ventless gas since nothing was ever hooked up?
 
If you don’t know what brand and model there is no way you can ensure safe use. Look around the door frame for a tag. If you can’t find a tag you probably won’t be able get insurance and if you did they could deny any claims related to the fireplace.
 
I would guess the side vents are for auxiliary heat ducts. But you really need to find the Id tag for us to help you anymore than that