Building Exhaust & Ventilation Ductwork Sealed

High Utility Bills: 

If you want to reduce your utility bills without a large capital expenditure, you should consider having your ducts tested for leakage. Duct leakage can more than double fan energy use, and, depending upon your building, also increase heating and cooling energy use significantly.  25% leakage in a supply duct system increases the amount of air that needs to be moved by 33%, which increases fan energy use by 98%. Should your building use 100% outdoor air (e.g. laboratories, hospitals, casinos, manufacturing facilities), your energy savings potential is magnified by the fact that any excess flow due to leakage also translates into the need to heat or cool that excess air flow.

 

 

Poor or Inconsistent Exhaust from Hotel Rooms/Apartments:

Most hotel, apartment, condominium and dormitory toilet exhausts do not work as designed, due to changes in the direction of the building’s “chimney effect” between the winter and the summer, and due to duct/shaft leakage. The “chimney effect” is caused by the temperature difference between indoors and outdoors, which means that lower floors are pressurized in the summer and depressurized in the winter, making it essentially impossible to balance the system once and then leave it. Duct leakage also compromises the performance of self-balancing dampers that can be used to address the changing chimney effect, but which need a consistent minimum duct pressure to operate properly. Moreover, excess exhaust flows translate to large increases in fan energy and heating/cooling energy use. Decreasing exhaust flow by 20% decreases fan energy use by almost 50%, while decreasing the heating and cooling needs for ventilation by at least 10%.

 

 

Inadequate Moisture Management:

If you have trouble removing moisture from humid environments (such as shower rooms), do not assume that you need to add an unsightly exhaust fan to the wall of that room, or that you need to install a larger exhaust fan on the roof. Exhaust systems have been found to leak more on average as compared to supply systems, often more than 25% of the fan flow. Thus, you should consider testing for duct leakage and sealing it before entertaining more expensive/invasive measures.

 

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A/C & Heating Ducting

Increased Cooling or Heating Capacity Needs:

If your cooling or heating needs have increased, perhaps due to higher occupancy, you may be able to meet the increased needs simply by sealing the leaks in your duct system. If your ducts are leaking 20% of the air that they are supposed to be delivering to the zones, simply sealing those leaks can increase your ability to cool zones with increased cooling loads. Aeroseal seals 80-90% of the leakage encountered. 

Often times systems are sized properly, but due to leaking ducts, they lose more than 20% of their capacity and cannot achieve the efficiency and comfort they were designed for.