Duct Sealing in Goleta, CA

Duct sealing in Goleta homes

The end bedroom never gets air. Registers blow gray dust. The attic feels conditioned and the hallway does not. Most duct leakage is not pinholes in the duct body. It is connections. Boots at ceiling registers, takeoff collars at the trunk, plenum seams.

In pre-1975 homes the attic-mounted gas furnace feeds a sheet metal trunk with round branch takeoffs. Cloth tape on those seams dried out decades ago. Post-1985 construction and AC retrofits use R-6 and R-8 flex. Flex boots work loose and dump conditioned air into the attic, then pull attic dust and insulation into the return path. Near the water, salt and marine moisture corrode sheet metal seams and register faces.

Sealing means mastic, brushed on, with mesh at wide joints. Foil tape alone fails overhead. Inner liner goes over the collar bead with its own band, insulation and outer jacket sealed separately. Boots get sealed to the ceiling drywall from above. Pressure pan readings tell us which rooms leak before and after.

Some ducts should not be sealed at all. Deteriorated fiberglass duct board plenums shedding fibers need replacement. So does rodent nesting. So does compressed, kinked flex in tight bays. Mastic over a crushed run buys nothing. Attic clearance and boot count drive the labor more than footage does.