One important aspect of an energy-efficient HVAC maintenance strategy is to make sure that your home’s ductwork is delivering conditioned air where it’s supposed to go with a minimum of leaks. The ducts in a home are your forced-air heating and cooling system’s circulatory system, and if those “arteries” and “veins” are leaking air, your system will be starved of fresh air on the intake and conditioned air where it’s needed in your living spaces. Air quality may suffer as well. Regular HVAC maintenance should include an inspection for leaky ducts.
Benefits of Good Ductwork Maintenance
- When ducts are properly sealed and insulated, they are more effective at delivering heat in winter and cooling in summer. This makes rooms more comfortable, saves energy, and helps preserve indoor air quality.
- If ducts are leak-proof, there will be no chance of “back drafts,” which occur when exhaust gases such as carbon monoxide escape from gas-fueled water heaters, furnaces and laundry dryers, and are sucked back into living areas.
- Dust, chemical fumes and other particles are always floating around the home, but when ducts are properly sealed, those pollutants cannot infiltrate the ductwork and be circulated throughout the home. Indoor air quality is thus improved, reducing health risks such as asthma and allergies.
- Leaky ductwork can reduce the effectiveness and efficiency of your heating or cooling system by as much as 20 percent. Regular HVAC maintenance will discover these leaks and alert you to the need for repairing them so as to lower your energy costs.
- If you’re ready to install new heating or cooling equipment, superior ductwork design and well-sealed ducts may allow you to realize significant savings by downsizing to a smaller model of whatever heating or cooling equipment you’re considering.
Contact Us
Donald P. Dick Air Conditioning has been serving the Fresno area for almost 40 years, and we’d like to share our expertise in heating and cooling systems with you and your family. If you have any home comfort issues at all, please contact us through our website, or better still, stop in and discuss your concerns with us.
Our goal is to help educate our customers in the greater Fresno, California area about energy and home comfort issues (specific to HVAC systems). For more information about duct sealing and other HVAC topics, download our free Home Comfort Resource guide.
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