If you’re asked which of your home’s HVAC components are most important, you’d probably say your furnace, air conditioner, or heat pump. Another component that you shouldn’t overlook is the duct system that distributes your conditioned air, because it directly affects your heating and cooling equipment’s performance.
If the duct design is flawed, the ductwork is poorly installed, or it’s damaged or leaky, you can experience problems with:
Temperature control. Damaged or leaky ductwork that lets conditioned air escape can make it difficult or impossible to maintain your desired comfort level.
Air quality. Pressure imbalances due to duct design flaws can pull in contaminants and allergens from unconditioned areas and erode your indoor air quality.
Energy consumption. Overcoming duct deficiencies increases the workload of your HVAC equipment, so it uses more energy.
Component longevity. That extra workload can also shorten your costly HVAC equipment’s lifespan.
Fundamentals of Effective Ductwork Design
A properly-designed duct system should deliver the correct volume of air, at your desired temperature, to the various rooms in your home. Also, it should return stale air back to the HVAC equipment for reconditioning. An effective duct design is based on principles of air distribution and thermal gains and losses, and requires quality materials, construction and installation. Such a system also relies on:
Proper duct sizing. Individual ducts must be sized to match the capacity of the HVAC equipment. Undersized ducts can’t carry a sufficient volume of air, and oversized ducts will reduce the system’s efficiency.
Balanced airflow. To avoid creating positive or negative pressure within the house and HVAC system, the duct system must have the right number of supply and return ducts to deliver an equal volume of air.
Duct location. Whenever possible, ducts should be placed inside the home’s conditioned envelope. If ducts must be routed through unconditioned areas like a garage or attic, they need to be properly sealed and insulated to limit energy losses.
If you have concerns that flaws in your HVAC duct design are affecting heating and cooling in your Broken Arrow home, contact us today at Air Assurance for expert help.
Our goal is to help educate our customers in the Tulsa and Broken Arrow, Oklahoma area about energy and home comfort issues (specific to HVAC systems). For more information about other HVAC topics, call us at 918-217-8273.