If you have an older home that still has its original ductwork, or perhaps have a duct system that wasn’t correctly installed, there’s a good chance your ducts are leaking conditioned air. In some homes, as much as 30 percent of the air escapes from ducts before ever reaching its destination, the rooms in your house. Effective duct sealing is essential, both at installation and during repairs, in order for your HVAC system to do its intended job.
Following are some signs of leaky ductwork:
- If your heating and cooling bills have been unusually high, defective ductwork, either leaking or blocked, could be the culprit.
- If some rooms are chronically difficult to condition, ducts serving those rooms might be leaking air or could be blocked. This is easy to check out. Is the air current coming out of vents as strong as in other rooms?
- You can see disconnected or otherwise defective ductwork with your own eyes. If the visible sections aren’t properly sealed or connected, chances are the same thing is happening in areas that you can’t see.
Problems that arise from defective ducts include:
- Your rooms aren’t getting all the conditioned air that they should be getting, as the air escapes from leaky ducts into unconditioned areas such as the attic, garage, crawlspace or wall voids. Your HVAC system has to work overtime to compensate for that lost air, running longer and harder. This wastes energy and places equipment under unnecessary stress.
- Rooms in your home have uneven heating and cooling, depending on whether duct runs serving those rooms are leaking or blocked, or not.
- As a result of air pressure differentials, dirty air in unconditioned areas may get sucked into leaky ducts, a phenomenon called backdrafting. That contaminated air will then circulate into your home.
While a handy homeowner can perform some ductwork repairs, for a complete job of both finding leaks and other problems, and then repairing them, you’ll need a trusted professional.
For more advice on proper duct sealing and repairs in your Yuma-area home, please contact us at Hansberger Refrigeration and Electric Company.
Our goal is to help educate our customers in Yuma, Arizona about energy and home comfort issues (specific to HVAC systems). For more information about ducts and other HVAC topics, download our free Home Comfort Guide or call us at 928-723-3183.
Credit/Copyright Attribution: “Pixabay”
