Moved into a house, first fireplace, a few questions.

[Send_It]

Hello,

As title said, I've moved into a new house and it has a fireplace. 1977 house was converted from wood to gas in 2000. We have hydronic gas heat, so this thing is almost entirely aesthetic.

I don't know what I have or if anything can be improved by myself. We have plans to remodel this eventually, most likely skin it with tile. I am curious if anyone has insights just from pictures. It puts off almost zero heat and is a bit drafty when not on.

Key questions:

• Should/can I fill in the slotted holes between the bricks with materials suggested in the wiki? What are they for?
• Is the blown in foam along the back of the bricks a problem? They don't seem to get warm at all, but I suspect this is just Great Foam or the like.
• Where should I start to make this a better fireplace? I'm extremely handy, but have never done fireplaces before and have enough experience to know that working with new systems is where I can make wildy wrong assumptions about best practices.

 

[DAKSY]

Without seeing the entire innards, I think you have a gas log lighter in a wood burning fire place. It’s used to ignite the fire wood. The efficiency of what you have is equivalent to having a campfire in your room, or about MINUS 10%. If you want heat out of that unit, you need to have either a Direct Vent gas fireplace or stove installed, or you pull the gas line & install an EPA-rated wood burning unit of some sort.

 

[Send_It]

Without seeing the entire innards, I think you have a gas log lighter in a wood burning fire place. It’s used to ignite the fire wood. The efficiency of what you have is equivalent to having a campfire in your room, or about MINUS 10%. If you want heat out of that unit, you need to have either a Direct Vent gas fireplace or stove installed, or you pull the gas line & install an EPA-rated wood burning unit of some sort.

That's and interesting take. I have to light this "lignite" by hand as far as I can tell, but the rest of the fireplace seems unchanged from the wood version (lining, etc). Looking at the deed history, whatever was done was done in 2000.

The real effect of the fireplace does seem to be about -10%.

 

[Lennox65]

That's and interesting take. I have to light this "lignite" by hand as far as I can tell, but the rest of the fireplace seems unchanged from the wood version (lining, etc). Looking at the deed history, whatever was done was done in 2000.

The real effect of the fireplace does seem to be about -10%.

View attachment 301542

That looks like a very primitive manual gas log burner.
You could upgrade to a modern gas log set but the efficiency will only be marginally better.
A direct vent insert would be a better choice.
As for the openings in the brick, that is part of the fireplace design, cold air is drawn in down low and heated around the firebox and then comes out the top as heated air.