What is this thing? How can I make it usable?

[Pidextra]

Hello everyone, I am a young guy with many things to learn.
My wife & I purchased a ranch house a couple of years ago and i have the opportunity to learn a lot with it being a fixer-upper... From top to bottom. Well now i am in the bottom... The basement.
We had a fireplace that i always knew was down there with a brick chimney (Good condition), and as i started pulling out drywall & opening it up... i noticed that the fireplace has some sort of 'heat-chamber' that allows you to connect into your houses return air duct work. Once i pulled down the ceiling tiles, i confirmed that it does connect into the central air/gas furnace. Upon looking a little more i noticed that at the bottom on the outside are two (one on each side) cutouts, that it looked like blowers used to be connected to.... which makes sense because when we moved in, i found two (funny looking) squirrel cage fans. Which i still used out in the barn.



So, now i am trying to figure out what to do next. Questions i have:

What is it?
What are their advantages?
Is it worth getting going again? (Fire Box is in good condition)
Can i put doors on? Iron? Glass?
What would you do? Decorative wise.

Thanks in advance. I appreciate the knowledge & experience i can gain from others.

~Pidextra

 

[mol1jb]

Its hard to tell the exact condition of the picture, but if I dug that out of the wall in my house, I would remove it and start from scratch. It seems to need quite a few parts and doesn't look to be in good condition to start with.

 

[zig]

What mol1jb said. Stop it before it get's to the children.

 

[FTG-05]

What would I do?

Two words: Start Over.

Good luck!

 

[begreen]

That looks like a mess and most likely not code compliant. The masonry chimney sitting on it is bizarre.

 

[huauqui]

Pidextra,

Welcome to the forum. What a great first post, you gave us good information and the picture clearly demonstrated what things are. As to what that is sorry but, other then an insurance liability, I have no idea. I don't think this unit has much for advantages, it is incomplete and appears way out of code, for today's codes anyway. It does not look worth trying to fix and I am not sure you could bring it up to a safe standard for burning even if you did a lot of work. Since I don't know what it is or how it originally was I would say no to doors we simply don't know the configuration before so we can't answer questions like did the doors have air intakes, glass, etc...? On the last questions I would take it out you could use the space for something else or rebuild it into a real solid heat giving stove or insert that would serve for years.

If you take it out you could do about anything in that space.

Thanks for the question and the pictures, we love that type of thing around here.

huauqui

 

[beatlefan]

Great post Pidextra, that's a very interesting setup. Almost looks homemade. I'm guessing someone had this great idea to heat the entire house with it and it never quite worked out.

 

[begreen]

Long story made short - consider a tear out and replacement. It's a liability. You will get better and safer performance by doing so.

 

[tarzan]

What is it? I'm curious if this thing was built and sold this way at some point.

Would like to here from someone who may have some experience or remembers something like it

Since it was covered up I suspect it wasn't working as planned. I wouldn't even entertain the thought of ever firing it back up but it's still an interesting contraption.

 

[begreen]

Could be a stock old ZC fireplace that someone modded with the duct take offs. If so, they violated the testing and certification of the unit and went against mechanical code. Besides being a rust bucket it looks like it's missing firebrick or refractory lining. The masonry chimney topping it is just weird.

If it were me I would be doing a general house safety check, looking all around for other "clever" projects done like this.

 

[nrc]

I'm no expert but I'm inclined to agree with those who say "tear it out." It looks like it may leave you a nice alcove that would provide options for either a stove or a manufactured fireplace. The challenge may be that chimney. It's just weird. Can you share some more pictures of what that looks like as it goes up? Is it entirely supported by that contraption? Does it have a liner inside? Does it remain that size? It looks like it may get smaller just as it's going out of sight. Is it possible that there was a fireplace above it on the first floor?

 

[Pidextra]

Good Morning everyone. I appreciate all of the comments thus far. I will provide some additional pictures tonight. This was an old pic when we first discovered it. Might shed some light on the topic by doing so.

Thank You again to everyone. I appreciate the input.