Cold air intake questions

[qwandury]

I recently bought this house. It has a new furnace that was installed a year ago. I have two six inch cold air ducts that vent to the north side of my house. Both cold air lines are not plumbed into the cold air intake on the furnace, they just basically hang in the rafters of my basement. The furnace has an exhaust line that is plumbed and goes outside. It also has a cold air intake on the front top that also could be plumbed to go somewhere but it wasn't. My issues is that these ducts are bringing in quite abit of cold air and my basement is freezing. I know some air needs to be brought in to prevent backdraft, but should one of these be capped or reduced and tied into the cold air intakes.

[nomadpeo]

not sure, but it sounds like it may be there to meet the requirement for combution air for intake on the furnace burners. is the basement also part of the conditioned space ? maybe the other pipe tee'd into the flue pipe was intended for a water heater. regardless, it seems it should be capped. the combustion air could be piped to a location closer to the vicinity of the furnace combustion air intake. i could be reading the situation wrong. anyone else got an idea ?

[qwandury]

Intakes are not tied off to anything, they just run about 6 feet into my house. At the end of the 6 feet they elbow, one for a foot. The other elbows down the side of the furnace's inside cold air return for about 4ft from the rafters of the basement and is just like the other one, Open...

[nomadpeo]

get a qualified contractor to check it all out. fresh air, combustion air and flue venting all needs to be done properly.