What's this ventilation system all about?

[Luckyaddaam]

We purchased this house built prior to 1970ish. It has an upstairs and basement fireplace, separate chimney shoots. There are 2 air intakes powered by a switch. the hole on the left is intake, there's another on the right. When switched on the air is pulled in there and put out in 2 vents, 12 and 25 feet away. The air coming out is not heated. I have had it burning HOT for 8 hours one day and it never heated up. Upon cleaning my fireplace yesterday I noticed on the inside there are 2 .... levers??? What do they do? Do they have anything to do with the air not heating? when the fan in turned on it seems to push air out of the front vents, I'm thinking, and I am no expert on indoor fires, when I have the front hole vents closed, the side levers up on both sides and the fan on, air is pulled from outside the fireplace, circulated through the front vent holes, "heated" then pushed out the vents? Or no.....

 

[Simonkenton]

It is going to run cool room air behind the hot fire box, warm it up, and push it out into the room.
And it won't take 8 hours to heat that up, 15 minutes ought to do it. It seems like if you mess with those levers enough you ought to be able to make it work. Might be a pretty good heater if you can figure it out.

 

[Luckyaddaam]

It is going to run cool room air behind the hot fire box, warm it up, and push it out into the room.
And it won't take 8 hours to heat that up, 15 minutes ought to do it. It seems like if you mess with those levers enough you ought to be able to make it work. Might be a pretty good heater if you can figure it out.

Should I leave the doors open or shut them? I want to leave them open to allow heat to excape, however, if the heat excape it won't heat the fire box...

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[Simonkenton]

Shut the doors.

 

[bholler]

And it won't take 8 hours to heat that up, 15 minutes ought to do it.

It may take a long time it may not work at all Many times vents like that were not designed well and are really ineffective.