The ductwork in your home transports air to and from your furnace and air conditioning equipment as needed. Ducts commonly develop air leaks as they get older and seals become weaker, which can lead to significant cost, health and comfort issues in your home.
Why Tight Ducts Are Important
There are three main reasons why having tight ductwork is so important, none more pressing than your health. When your ducts are leaking, air not only leaks out, but dirty outside air also may infiltrate into the ducts. This air has not been filtered to remove microorganisms and other particulates that will degrade your indoor air quality. This can trigger or exacerbate health issues in sensitive individuals, and in any event, nobody wants to breathe dirty air when they don’t have to.
Another consequence of loose ductwork is a decrease in comfort. If you’re trying to raise the temperature of your home to a comfortable level, your HVAC equipment will have to work harder to accomplish this if conditioned air is leaking out of the ducts.
There’s a related financial component to the importance of tight ducts. Any heating or cooling that doesn’t reach its intended target means that you will need to condition more air to take its place. Air leaks can lead to a serious reduction in efficiency for your HVAC system, which will require you to run your heating more often. This will show up in increased energy bills.
Ductwork in the Winter
Arguably the most important time to have properly sealed ductwork is during the winter months. This is when your HVAC system will do most of its work for the year, so tight ducts are all the more imperative to your comfort. There’s a safety issue as well, since leaky ducts can allow backdrafting of harmful gases such as carbon monoxide back into your home.
To ensure that you have tight ducts, you can have an HVAC professional perform a duct blower test. This test and professional assessment will reveal where and how badly your ducts are leaking, and provide a roadmap for needed repairs.
To ensure that the ductwork in your Dayton area home is in proper working order, contact the professionals at Ace Hardware Home Services, Inc.
Our goal is to help educate our customers in Dayton, Ohio about energy and home comfort issues (specific to HVAC systems).
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