Ductwork Repair and Sealing

Almost every north Houston house runs its ductwork through the attic, and an attic here reaches 130 to 150 degrees on a summer afternoon. Every leak in a duct up there dumps air you paid to cool into that space, and every gap pulls hot, dusty attic air into the system. Older flex duct sags, kinks and gets crushed by whatever was stored on it. Boots pull away from the registers. Tape dries out and lets go.

The symptoms are specific: one room that never cools while the rest of the house is fine, a system that runs constantly without the house ever feeling cold, dust that reappears a day after cleaning, and an electricity bill out of proportion to the thermostat setting. A duct leakage test puts a number on it.

The fixes are sealing with mastic rather than tape, replacing crushed or undersized runs, adding a return where a room has none, and insulating runs that have lost their jacket. It is unglamorous work and it is often the best money spent on a Houston system, because it makes the equipment you already own do the job it was sized for.

Whatever the problem turns out to be, the first step is the same: describe it, say where the house is, and one independent HVAC contractor working in your town contacts you to look at it. No charge for being connected, and no obligation once he has.