Your home’s ductwork plays a vital role for keeping your home comfortable and energy bills within reason. The ducts also affect indoor air quality, for better or for worse, which should be of importance to you if anyone in your home suffers respiratory ailments or if you use combustion appliances.
Yet air ducts often take a back seat to cooling and heating systems when it comes to maintenance. This could be attributed to the fact that air ducts are generally installed out of sight and, excluding zoning systems, ducts don’t have any moving parts.
If your ducts haven’t been inspected in recent seasons or you suspect problems with your ductwork, use this guide to know when your ducts need to be replaced or repaired.
Inspecting Your Ducts
Not all air ducts may be accessible. For the ducts you can inspect, look for dirt streaks at joints and listen for rattling noises, which indicate loose ducts. Even with no moving parts, ductwork endures substantial static pressure, which can cause seals to fail and ducts to separate and fall away. Lastly, check air pressure at the supply vents. Uneven airflow is characterized by uneven temperatures and it’s a sign of poor duct sizing.
Do it Yourself or Hire a Pro?
Duct joints should be wrapped with heat-resistant metal tape, whether you detect an air leak or not. This could be a do-it-yourself project, though smaller leaks are difficult to detect without the proper equipment. Moreover, replacing ducts that are sized incorrectly is also a job for your HVAC provider.
When you consider that the average home loses up to 30 percent of heating to poor duct design, a duct evaluation performed by your HVAC provider will yield the best results for comfort, efficiency and enhanced indoor air quality. Personal safety is also a two-fold factor. Ducts aren’t always easy to access, and duct leaks could cause combustion appliances to backdraft, which may pull in harmful fumes.
For the best results deciding if the ductwork in your Indianapolis home needs to be replaced, contact Mowery Heating, Cooling and Plumbing today!
Our goal is to help educate our customers in Brownsburg, Indiana and surrounding areas about energy and home comfort issues (specific to HVAC systems).
Credit/Copyright Attribution: “Jose Angel Astor Rocha/Shutterstock”
