Are there spans of ductwork in your home that run through unheated spaces? The attic, garage, crawl space and unfinished basement are much colder in the fall and winter than your home’s living area. To cut heating losses, it’s important to ensure properly sealed HVAC ducts. Here’s a look at why duct sealing is important, and the benefits you can expect once you have a professional contractor complete the job for you.
As air circulates from the furnace to the living space, it distributes heated air through supply registers. If there are gaps or cracks in the ductwork, air seeps out and is wasted. This isn’t a huge factor in areas where the ductwork passes through walls between two rooms or under the floor between the upper story and the ground floor, since the lost air can still help achieve the desired temperature in your home. However, when air is lost through gaps in unheated spaces outside your home’s envelope, it’s a complete waste of energy and money.
Insulating properly sealed HVAC ducts is also imperative for cutting heat losses. Air ducts are typically made from thin, conductive metal. That means the air passing through them can lose 10 to 30 percent of their heat unless the ductwork is insulated against the cold temperatures found in unheated spaces. This forces your furnace to work harder in order to compensate for the energy loss. The same applies to air conditioning.
Ductwork should be sealed with duct mastic, not mere duct tape, a product with a very misleading name. Once sealed, the ductwork can be insulated. Properly sealed HVAC ducts provide the following benefits:
- Lower heating bills in the winter and cooling bills in the summer
- Better airflow from supply registers
- A more comfortable interior, even on the coldest Western Slope nights
Sealing and insulating ductwork is a job for the professionals. For more information on the importance of properly sealed HVAC ducts, please contact us at Climate Control Company. We’ve been providing quality HVAC services to Western Colorado since 1956.
Our goal is to help educate our customers in Aspen, Vail and the surrounding Western slope communities in Colorado about energy and home comfort issues (specific to HVAC systems). For more information about properly-sealed HVAC ducts and other HVAC topics, please visit our website.
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