Ah, summer. The time of year when air conditioners are put to the test all over the country, and especially in Florida. Hopefully, you’ve already had a professional check out your system for you to confirm that it’s in good shape. If you haven’t taken a look at your indoor air quality too, though, then you’re setting yourself up for more problems later on. Indoor air quality is just as important during the summer as climate control. It’s also an area that a lot of homeowners tend to neglect. Let’s go over one of the lesser-known ways to improve indoor air quality in your home this summer, and help your air conditioner efficiency at the same time! Duct repair.
How Contaminants Infiltrate Your Ducts
The average home’s air is full of all kinds of nasty airborne contaminants, including dust, dirt, dander, pollen, viruses, bacteria, and mold spores. Breathing in these kinds of contaminants can cause an equally wide range of negative health effects, ranging from mild allergy attacks to the flu and even more serious conditions. Fortunately, most of the time these contaminants are spread out in small enough concentrations that your body can easily defend itself against them. The problem is one specific area: your ducts.
Ductwork often develops leaks over the years, mostly due to simple things like expanding and contracting with the temperature of the air. This causes energy efficiency issues, which we’re not going to get into in this blog, but it also provides many more points of ingress for contaminants to collect. Once all of those contaminants have collected in your ducts, all it takes is you turning on one of your climate control systems to blast all of them all over the house. This causes your indoor air quality to plummet. If you want to prevent this from happening, you need to make sure that your ducts are in good repair.
Techniques for Duct Repair
Most duct sealing and repair is a fairly simple process, since most duct leaks are relatively small. For larger holes and gaps in the ductwork, you may need to replace sections of it to restore proper function. For most of them, though, you just need a bit of mastic. Mastic is a type of epoxy that is painted into the leak in the ducts. Once dry, it will seal the leak while being flexible enough not to crack. On occasion, the mastic will be supplemented with regulation duct tape. This is not the duct tape you’re probably used to (which is, ironically, horrible at sealing ducts) but a special kind that includes a metallic layer, helping to keep the mastic from cracking. For the majority of duct repairs, this is more than enough to keep the ducts sealed.
The A/C Guy of Tampa Bay Inc. provides comprehensive duct repair services in Tampa, FL. If you haven’t had your ducts repaired in a while, contact us today to schedule an appointment with one of our professional technicians. We’ll make sure that your ducts are in top condition this summer.