Duct Sealant Longevity:
"Duct leakage accounts for much of the inefficiency of residential forced air heating and cooling systems--the leakage of hot or cold air through ducts that means a waste of your energy dollars. Most duct leakage could be prevented with proper duct sealing. But field examinations of ducts often find their seals failing over time. To provide lab data about which sealants and tapes last, and which are likely to fail, we are conducting ongoing accelerated testing at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory Environmental Energy Technologies Division.
Our major conclusion so far is that you should use anything but duct tape to seal ducts. (We've defined duct tape as any fabric-based tape with rubber adhesive.) The testing we've done so far shows that under challenging but realistic conditions, duct tapes fail.
A report of of our research in Home Energy magazine provides more information on the longevity and failure rates of various duct sealing methods."
"Duct leakage accounts for much of the inefficiency of residential forced air heating and cooling systems--the leakage of hot or cold air through ducts that means a waste of your energy dollars. Most duct leakage could be prevented with proper duct sealing. But field examinations of ducts often find their seals failing over time. To provide lab data about which sealants and tapes last, and which are likely to fail, we are conducting ongoing accelerated testing at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory Environmental Energy Technologies Division.
Our major conclusion so far is that you should use anything but duct tape to seal ducts. (We've defined duct tape as any fabric-based tape with rubber adhesive.) The testing we've done so far shows that under challenging but realistic conditions, duct tapes fail.
A report of of our research in Home Energy magazine provides more information on the longevity and failure rates of various duct sealing methods."
Comments