How often do you think about your home’s ductwork? We’d guess not often. After all, your house is designed to hide the ductwork in walls and up in the attic. When you don’t see something, it often slips your mind.
But your ducts deserve some occasional thought because if something goes wrong with them, they’ll have an immense negative impact on your house. Duct leakage is a common problem, and it does more damage than you might realize.
We offer a range of duct services in Hart County, including duct testing to locate leakage and duct sealing to solve it. You need to know why leaky ducts are such a problem and why you’ll need the assistance of our professionals to repair them.
The Lurking Threat of Leaky Air Ducts
Most ducts are made from three different materials: metal, flexible plastic, or “duct board” (similar to cardboard). All can develop leaks from a combination of reasons, including corrosion, humidity, construction damage, poor installation, sagging, and vermin.
It doesn’t take large holes or gaps to begin to cause the heated and cooled air moving through the ventilation system to start to escape, ending up in places like the attic, crawl space, or between walls—places that don’t exactly need heating or cooling. Here’s why this is a problem for your home:
- High energy bills: The leaks in air ducts can allow for up to 30% of the air in the ventilation system to escape. That’s 30% of the air you’ve already paid to either cool with the AC or heat with the heater. The HVAC system will need to continue to work to make up for what’s lost, and that means you’ll see much higher costs on your energy bills—all for absolutely no benefit.
- HVAC stress: The extra work the HVAC system does means more than steeper utility bills. It means greater wear and tear on the heater, AC, and blower assembly. The HVAC system will age faster, needing more repairs and likely an early replacement. That’s a steep cost!
- Uneven heating and cooling: When hot or cool air keeps slipping out of the ductwork before it reaches the rooms along a stretch of ducts, it will lead to uneven comfort. Some rooms will be cooler/hotter than others and general comfort will suffer. The leaks also lower air pressure in the ductwork so that airflow also declines.
- Humidity fluctuations: Air duct leaks often cause changes in humidity in a house. Moist and damp air from outside the ductwork can easily infiltrate and create humidity issues in summer, and dry air can get into the ducts during winter.
- Air quality trouble: Leaks in the ducts will also pull in the dust, debris, and even mold spores from closed-off parts of the house. This can severely lessen the quality of the air circulating the home.
Call Professionals for Duct Sealing
If you’ve noticed high energy bills, moldy smells from the ducts, uneven comfort, humidity changes, or other unusual signs from your HVAC system, we recommend you call our technicians to arrange for duct testing. If we discover you have duct leakage, we’ll make the ventilation system airtight once more with professional duct sealing.
Contact JN Electrical Temperature Control, Inc and you’ll “Feel the Difference”!