Have you looked at your ductwork recently?

7 January 2020
 Categories: Business, Blog

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How much attention do you pay to your ductwork? While ductwork plays a vital role in many homes and businesses, helping to regulate the environment and keep everyone comfortable, it is frequently overlooked and ignored. Ignoring your ductwork for a prolonged period of time is a bad idea and can lead to serious problems in the long term.

What is the purpose of ductwork?

Ductwork is used to distribute air around a building. It will often form part of an air conditioning, heating or extraction system in residential, industrial or commercial premises. Whatever the temperature may be outside your premises, ductwork will help to keep the building's temperature correctly controlled. Ductwork functions by sucking the air from the building into a device such as an air conditioner or a heater where the temperature of the air is adjusted. Once the air is the correct temperature, the ductwork will then redistribute the air back into your building. Unless your ductwork is professionally designed, installed and maintained, it is unlikely to achieve this task in an effective manner, and the climate control in your property will not operate as intended.

Installing your ductwork

A professional ductwork installer will understand the importance of matching your ductwork to your HVAC equipment. The installation engineer will ensure that all of the ductwork is free from air leaks which could compromise the integrity of your air conditioning or even lead to system failure if the leaks lead to the system becoming overworked. By choosing to hire a professional installation engineer, you can be confident that your new ductwork will function correctly and will last for many years of service without incident.

Maintaining your ductwork

While you should expect your new ductwork to provide a long service life, that doesn't mean you can afford to ignore it completely. Over time, your new ductwork will experience considerable vibration and thermal stress since it is constantly expanding and contracting as it is used by air at a range of temperatures. These stresses can cause the ductwork to move around and can loosen the joints between the various parts of the ductwork. Given long enough, it is even possible for the ductwork to come apart entirely if you don't look after it. Most ductwork will be showing signs of deterioration after around ten to fifteen years of constant use, and at that time you should start to think about installing replacement ductwork.