Even if your home’s heating and cooling system is working perfectly, you’ll have a hard time efficiently and comfortably conditioning the house if the ducts are leaking air or lack insulation. Up to 30 percent of a home’s heated or cooled air can be lost via leaky ducts. This is why effective duct sealing plays an essential role in efficient heating and cooling.
How Can You Tell Ducts Are Leaking?
Key tip-offs to leaky ducts are heating and cooling bills that seem unusually high, or certain rooms that struggle to stay comfortable in winter and summer. If a room is stuffy no matter the temperature setting, that’s another red flag. And of course, the most obvious signal that ducts are leaking is visual: You can actually see disconnected duct sections or otherwise defective (kinked or tangled) ductwork.
Duct Sealing Benefits
The main one is that all the air that your heating or cooling equipment is outputting will arrive at its destination, the rooms in your home, rather than emptying into areas where it’s not serving any purpose. That would be crawl spaces, wall and ceiling voids and cavities, the attic or garage.
In addition, effective duct sealing will give your HVAC equipment a break. It won’t be working overtime to compensate for conditioned air that’s leaking into unconditioned areas. You’ll save energy and money, and HVAC equipment will run longer without breaking down.
Duct sealing also improves indoor air quality, by keeping dirty air in unconditioned areas from getting sucked (backdrafting) into leaky ducts and circulating in your home.
Going hand-in-hand with tight ducts is insulated ductwork, especially where duct sections run through the aforementioned unconditioned areas of your house.
Professional Duct Sealing
A handy homeowner can seal ductwork that’s accessible by using quality metal-backed tape and mastic sealant. Yet, a trusted professional will do a much more comprehensive job. Using high-tech diagnostic equipment, not only will ascertain exactly where air is leaking; they’ll make durable and secure repairs to the leaky ducts.
If you have leaky ductwork in your Corpus Christi-area home, please contact us CCAC, Inc.
Our goal is to help educate our customers in Corpus Christi, Texas about energy and home comfort issues (specific to HVAC systems). For more information about HVAC topics, download our free Home Comfort Guide or call us at 361-678-2495.
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