My condo in South Bend, Indiana, is heated & cooled by a forced air system, my nice friend and I have a furnace & an air conditioner that utilize ductwork to transfer the conditioned air, but while I’ve always been undoubtedly conscientious about replacing air filters & scheduling seasonal service for the heating & cooling units, I totally neglected the duct system, however the supply & return ducts are largely concealed inside walls, behind ceilings & in the crawlspace, and i forgot all about them.
It wasn’t until I had some complaints with the performance of the furnace last winter, that I realized the importance of the ductwork.
In South Bend, uneven temperatures in the teens or even the disadvantage digits aren’t unusual. My nice friend and I often run the furnace for more than half the year, & the cost of heating is significant. I noticed that my weekly heating bills were quite a bit higher than usual. The furnace seemed to be running non stop & yet the condo felt slightly freezing, however certain rooms were downright cold. There was also significantly more dust & debris circulating in the air. When I called for repairs from a local Heating & A/C supplier, the serviceman found nothing wrong with the furnace, then he then inspected the performance of the ductwork & discovered that nearly thirty percent of the heated air was escaping through holes & cracks at the seams. The leaks were causing the furnace to run longer, work harder & use more energy… Because the maximum amount of heated air was failing to reach the intended destination, there were problems with uneven comfort! Plus, those flaws in the ductwork were pulling in contaminants such as dust & fumes that were then getting spread throughout the home.