Preventing Heat From Sneaking Out of the House

[elleng]

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/13/garden/13prag.html?hpw

[NNN0LHI]

1. Tell you what I did here last summer that made a huge difference in this house

I removed all of the +20 year old dried out fiber based duct tape from around all the duct work in the crawlspace and replaced it with foil type duct tape. It was a little work but I took my time(all summer), and it was well worth it. Used to be a few degrees cooler at both of the far ends of this ranch style house with the thermostat being in the middle room. It doesn't do that any more. Get the same temperature in all the rooms now. Big difference. The gas usage seems way down this year too. The old fiber based duct tape was completely dried out and falling off letting the warm air in the winter the cool air in the summer to be just blown down into the crawlspace.

If someone lives in a house where these duct work joints are readily accessible I highly recommend doing this. The difference was like night and day here. Another plus is that the foil type tape makes all your duct work a lot more stronger and stable too. Cost was about $30 bucks for a couple of rolls of the aluminum duct tape.

Don