What do you need most for your air conditioning system to succeed this summer and ensure you have a reliable source of cooling that doesn’t waste energy? If your first thought is, “professional maintenance,” that’s a great answer. You definitely need to have this scheduled if you haven’t already.
But your air conditioning system (and HVAC system in general) might need more help. The AC doesn’t do all the work of cooling your home on its own. It needs ducts to transport the cooled air through the house to all the rooms. It’s easy to imagine these ducts will always be in the best condition since you don’t see much of them. But poor duct efficiency due to damage, air leaks, or poor installation can turn into an anchor pulling down your AC.
If you’ve never arranged for duct system efficiency testing in Acworth, GA, we strongly recommend you schedule it with our team. If you’ve got faulty ducts, it’s not always easy to tell. We’ll find out if your ducts need service and exactly what will restore them.
The Effects Inefficient Ducts Have on Cooling
The most common efficiency problem with ducts is when they have air leaks. These leaks don’t have to be large: a few small holes, or a gap where duct sections have started to pull apart because of sagging. Most ducts are made from plastic or a type of cardboard called duct board, and it doesn’t take much to create holes in them.
The duct system must maintain an airtight seal along its length so it won’t lose air pressure. Any holes that puncture this seal will lead to a drop in efficiency because air pressure will decline. Less cooled air will reach the rooms. In fact, air leaks can account for a loss of up to 30% of the air moving through the ducts. Not only does this mean less effective cooling, but it also creates a rise in energy costs since the AC must make up for the lost air.
Think of it this way: if you’ve got air leaks in your ducts, you’re sending cooled air into places like the attic and between the walls. Do you want to pay to cool these places? Of course not, but that’s what’s happening.
Leaking air ducts can also have a damaging effect on indoor air quality, since they allow dust and other debris from closed-off parts of the house to get into the ventilation system. This can also cause an increase in indoor humidity.
Testing and Solving Duct Efficiency
When you schedule duct system efficiency testing with us, we’ll seal off the entire duct system and then raise the pressure inside it with a power vacuum. We then measure how fast the air pressure declines. This will tell us if the ducts are losing air through leaks. If we determine there’s a problem, we’ll then take care of repairing the ductwork using professional duct sealing techniques. When we complete the sealing, we’ll retest the duct system to see if it’s at the proper efficiency level.
Dayco Systems has been Metro Atlanta’s choice for more than three generations. Contact us today to schedule duct efficiency testing for your home.
