Why do I have an airflow problem?

Derek Cole explains why your HVAC ducts might not be delivering air properly. About 20% of air can leak through holes and cracks, and kinked or disconnected ducts under your house are common culprits. Metal elbows and proper duct sizing help maintain pressure to the farthest vents.
Questions this video answers
20% on average
Chapters
You could be losing. According to Energy Star, 20% on average is lost through holes and cracks in the duct system. So that's one possibility. You could be losing air that way. I personally would just go under the house, take a look at everything visually. A lot of times when they have different homes or newer homes, they have a kink or it's kind of choked off. On the run of duct from the trunk line to where it's going, you want to make sure that it's flat. Even if you do have to do a turn of any kind, what we do here is we actually install a metal elbow in the duct so it can make a smoother turn than just using the flex and turning on a 90 degree angle, which kind of chokes some of the airflow off. So I would check that to see if that's happening. Also in homes, a problem we've seen before is it's not been reduced correctly going down. So if you go to like a Zaxby's or a Red Robin and you look up above in the ceiling, you will see the duct system. And what you'll see is that properly sized duct. You'll see it going big, small, smaller, smaller, all the way down. That's called reducing. That is a proper way to do it. That way the air pressure gets all the way down to the end of that run of trunk line, so you can have air at the end. That is a proper way to do it. It's the way we do it. That's the way it should be done. Any engineered drawings you see, that is the way it's done. And that is a problem in most homes we've gone to. Because the back bedroom or the side over here is not getting the airflow. Well, it's because the pressure has dropped. And if you think about it, it's kind of like a. It's kind of like a water hose. If you have the water hose at home and you just, you know, sit it there, turn the water on, the water comes out, kind of drips out. If you put your thumb over the outlet, it'll spray a lot further. Right. Same situation. It's because of the pressure. So air is just like water and should be treated that way. So you want to make sure you keep the pressure up. But I would crawl in there and just see visually if anything is going wrong or anything's not connected. And then I would get a professional to come take a look at it.
More from Derek

How to Prevent Mold and Odor in Your Air Conditioning System with UV Light #shorts









