Find an Aeroseal Installer to Fix Your Leaky Duct Problems
In many homes both old and new, metal ductwork carries cold or not air from the HVAC system to rooms throughout the house. It’s easy to forget about the ductwork as long as the HVAC system itself is in working order and the home remains comfortable.
But what homeowners don’t realize is that their HVAC ductwork could be leaking a third or more of the air supply into marginal areas between rooms before it ever reaches its intended destination. This results in higher annual heating bills and more stress on the HVAC system. As we discussed last week
Testing ductwork
When you hire an Aeroseal installer, the first step will always be to diagnose how much air and where the ductwork is leaking. This process can be as simple as going into a crawl space or attic and feeling for drafts. If leaks are large enough, you can usually feel the air by hand.
In case of smaller leaks, or leaks that are harder to find because of position, or because they are many smaller leaks, there are other options. Smoke pens can be used to track air particle movement away from the ductwork, while soapy water sprayed onto the ducts themselves will bubble up around air leaks.
If a more accurate measure of air leakage is desired, the duct blaster test is the recognized gold standard. To carry out this test, a contractor seals up all the registers and uses a duct blaster to pressure the system. The subsequent pressure loss over time will tell you exactly how big the leaks are and how much they are affecting your energy bill.
Sealing up the leaks
Once an Aeroseal installer determines where the ductwork is leaky, the leaks need to be sealed. Leaks can be patched by hand using any of the several options available, including spray sealant, brush on sealant, or rolled mastic sealant that are manually applied to the exterior of the ductwork.
For larger systems or those with bigger leakage problems, Aeroseal is the superior option. Aeroseal is a non-toxic aerosol sealant that patches ductwork from the inside out. The product is rapidly becoming popular for both homes and businesses, and is valued for its speed and efficiency. The product has become so popular with homeowners that Aeroseal has even developed a version of the product specifically for the residential market called HomeSeal.
To apply the product, an Aeroseal installer first blocks off the HVAC registers so that the aerosolized mist has nowhere to go but into the ductwork. Then, they pump the aerosol directly into the duct system. It disperses throughout the ducts, finding any holes and sticking to them. The sealant sticks around the edges of the hole, causing it to rapidly close up in much the same way blood platelets cause blood clots to stop bleeding; except in this case, the sealant stops air from bleeding out of the ducts.
One of the advantages of Aeroseal is that it can fill all the holes and cracks automatically, even those that might be too small to find using normal diagnostic methods. This can result in a system with the lowest air loss possible, leading to much higher efficiency and lower heating bills, always a good thing. The average customer can save around $40 every month on their electric bill as the result of duct sealing.
Though no ductwork system is ever 100% efficient, hiring an Aeroseal installer to seal most of the cracks and gaps in your ductwork can result in big energy savings. Since well over 95% of older homes have leaky ducts, it’s always worth it to get yours checked out.