Tight Ducts Will Ensure Heat Stays Inside Your Home

No one looks forward to high heating bills in winter. If your energy costs seem to be soaring, it could be from problems in your ductwork. In winter, ductwork’s sole purpose is to ferry heated air into your home. Leaks and other ductwork issues interfere with this. Here is more information about why tight ducts are so important.

Leaky ducts let heated air escape. This has several consequences. Your home won’t feel warm enough and you’ll be more likely to turn up your thermostat to compensate.

Turning the heat up leads to higher heating bills, but it isn’t the only costly problem. When your HVAC system has to run so much, it will wear out faster. Air leaks in ductwork contribute to expensive furnace repairs and can lead to premature system breakdown.

These reasons are why sealing leaks in ducts is an important part of duct maintenance, but sometimes a contractor needs to do more than seal the leaks. If ducts are housed in unheated parts of the home and are not insulated, they will also lose a lot of heat as heat transfers to the ambient cold space.

What to Expect from Duct Repair

When a professional contractor works to repair your ducts, it is not just a matter of finding obvious air leaks and covering them. Tight ducts mean heated air flows freely into the home with no leaks at all. Proper sealing involves replacing damaged duct components and sealing even pinpoint leaks.

Other important steps include:

• Straightening sagging flex ducts — Unlike hard ducts, flex ducts can sag if they are not well supported and this sagging creates reduced airflow.

• Insulating ducts

The result is that your ducts will channel heat into your home the way they are intended to. In addition, your indoor air quality should improve. Leaks in ducts allow unfiltered air into the ductwork and therefore into your home.

For more information about improving your home’s ductwork, please contact us at C.R. Wolfe Heating & Air Conditioning.

Our goal is to help educate our customers in Middletown, New York about energy and home comfort issues (specific to HVAC systems). For more information about ductwork and other HVAC topics, download our free Home Comfort Guide or call us at 845-367-4482.

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