Quadrafire 7100fp factory knockouts in place

[Woodbutcher54]

Hi All! I'm going into the third heating season with my Quad and I love it! Just had it apart to retrieve a piece of newspaper that got sucked into one of the blower fans and was making noise...gave it a good cleaning while I was at it too! Anyway, while I was cleaning it, I noticed a bunch of punched knock-outs that are still in-tact. They are right behind the lower air grill. Does anyone know what these are for?
I was noticing that with the blower access door removed, the fans blow at least 2 to 3 times more air out of the top! So in my mind, the enclosed lower section seems to be lacking enough open area and is "starving" the fans. Hence my question about the knock-outs. I will attempt to load some photos as I am new to the forum.

 

[Woodbutcher54]

 

[Skyscapes]

Hi All! I'm going into the third heating season with my Quad and I love it! Just had it apart to retrieve a piece of newspaper that got sucked into one of the blower fans and was making noise...gave it a good cleaning while I was at it too! Anyway, while I was cleaning it, I noticed a bunch of punched knock-outs that are still in-tact. They are right behind the lower air grill. Does anyone know what these are for?
I was noticing that with the blower access door removed, the fans blow at least 2 to 3 times more air out of the top! So in my mind, the enclosed lower section seems to be lacking enough open area and is "starving" the fans. Hence my question about the knock-outs. I will attempt to load some photos as I am new to the forum.

Hi, I have the 7100 also and am on my second heating season. I'm also wondering what the deal is with the knockout at the bottom. I love the fireplace and it dose the trick to primarily heat my 2700sq ft ranch in central Illinois, but I feel like it could do better. The fireplace relies on the blower to get heat into the room and the blower seems that it's not powerful enough. I also feel that the blower Is starving for air. Have you remedied the problem yet? I have been tossing around the idea of hooking a powerful inline fan to the auxiliary air duct and opening the bottom lever to see if that dose anything.

 

[Wood4life]

Hi woodbutcher54,

I know you haven't been on here for a while, hoping you will get a notification. Have you figured out the knockout issue? My 7100 used to work great before we put the front on, and when we opened it up this summer to clean under the bricks, the fan air flow seemed better. It just seems to be suffocating. Barely any air comes out of the top. Prior to the mission hill front, we could stand in front, 4 feet away and feel the air flow. Just seems like an awful lot of noise for what it puts out.
Any solution? Should we punch out the knockouts?