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Shafer Heating & Cooling, LLC Blog

How Your Ducts Could Be Costing You Extra Money

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Be honest: you don’t think much about the ductwork in your house, do you? No shame in that. Ducts are hidden from sight and therefore tend to escape people’s attention. But we recommend you do give some consideration to your ductwork because it might be the reason you’re paying more and more each month to keep your house comfortable.

Yes, your ducts might be stealing money from you! If this is news to you, we’ll give you the scoop below.

The Problem With Leaky Air Ducts

You can’t see most of your home’s ductwork, and that makes it easy to imagine the ducts are in great shape. But air leaks in ducts are a common problem that occurs for a range of reasons. Poor duct installation (which happens all too often) with too many kinks, bends, and sags often cause gapping to occur in the duct material. Corrosion creates holes in metal ducts, and vermin infestations are often behind many duct leaks. 

Whatever the cause of the air leaks, they harm the ductwork’s ability to do its job. Ducts need to retain an airtight seal along their length to maintain air pressure. Any breach in this seal allows for air pressure to drop and the HVAC system to have trouble operating at its normal level. Extensive air leaks in a ventilation system will result in low airflow coming from the vents and a general decline in comfort.

However, that’s only part of the problem. The air escaping through leaks does more than lower air pressure. It also sends that air to… nowhere. Or at least nowhere you need heated or cooled air, such as the attic or between the walls. You’ve already paid to heat or cool that air with the HVAC system, and it’s not getting to you. Up to 30% of the air circulated through the ventilation system of a home can vanish through air leaks, and that means almost a third of the money you pay for comfort is also going to waste. That adds up!

So with leaky ducts, you get poorer comfort and higher costs for that comfort. It’s not a winning combination.

What can you do about it?

Duct Testing and Duct Sealing to the Rescue

If you suspect leaky ducts driving up your bills and lowering your comfort, you only have to call our team for professional duct services in Hillsboro, OH. We’ll first test the ductwork by boosting the pressure inside the ventilation system and measuring how fast the pressure drops. This will tell us if there are duct leaks and the extent of them. We can then do the job of sealing the leaks using equipment like metallic tapes and mastic sealant. When we finish, we’ll test the ducts again to ensure that we successfully restored their airtight condition.

You only want professionals to handle this service. Trust us, you can’t use duct tape to complete the job—not only is it hard to reach the ducts, but duct tape isn’t actually useful for ducts and quickly degrades after a few months. Leave the work to us and we’ll see you have your HVAC system back to doing its best work.

Shafer Heating & Cooling, LLC: You are just one call away from the comfort and savings you deserve!

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