Eco-Remodelers

I’ve been so busy renovating the house to be more green, I haven’t taken the time to write about it. One of my projects was to inspect and insulate my ductwork and I finally got around to doing it. And now I’m finally getting around to blogging about it.

It’s a good thing I did, but I should have done it much sooner. I started by inspecting all the ducts near my furnance. Ducts work by taking the warmed (or cooled) air and sending them to the rest of the house. More ducts are used to return the cooler (or warmer) air back to the furnace or heat pump. I wanted to look my ductwork over and make sure there were no gaps, holes, or problems.

I noticed one big problem right away. About 20 feet away from my furnace, one duct had completely come off the main line. This duct was serving warm air up to our living room and our daughter’s room. This explained why her room was always a bit cooler than the rest. But the living room is where our programmable thermostat is. This meant that the heater might be staying on and running longer than it should because the room with the main temperature readings wasn’t getting enough direct heat.

With some duct tape and duct sealant, I re-attached the duct. I also found a few other minor problems and sealed those ducts up as well. To really prevent leaks of warmed or cooled air, you can use duct tape (not the gray “regular” duct tape - but only the silver tape approved for ductwork) and/or a duct sealant. The sealant can be applied using a trowel, a brush, or even your finger. I used both to make sure I got a great seal.

Next, I insulated all my exposed ductwork down in our basement. At all home improvement stores, there is insulation designed specifically for your ducts. All you do it open it up and wrap it around the ducts. You use tape to tape up the seam where the two sides of the insulation meet. It’s that easy.

All the insulation means there will be much less heat-loss while the warm air is being sent to the rooms in your house. The rooms will warm up quicker and the heater will turn off faster and stop using as much energy. Which saves you money.

I did find up problem up in my crawl space. Apparently, at some point, the previous homeowners had cable installed. The cable installers were too lazy to do their jobs, so they pulled open my air duct return and shoved their cables up through my heating system. I was so beyond mad. I was furious that someone would compromise the heating ducts like that.

I cut the cables, screwed the opening shut, and sealed up the ducts again. The change in the heat throughout our house was amazing in February and March. The air coming out of our registers was so much warmer and the house warmed up that much faster.

I highly recommend sealing and insulating your ducts, either from in your basement or under your house in the crawlspace underneath. It’s very easy to do and very inexpensive - and it will save you a lot of money.

If you don’t want to try to do it yourself, you can always contact a heating contractor to come inspect your ducts, to seal things up, and to insulate for you. Find a heating contractor for free at ConstructionDeal.com.

This entry was posted on Monday, April 20th, 2009 at 10:20 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.