Duct working

Duct Working.

Ducts are used in heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) to deliver and remove air. The needed airflows include, for example, supply air, return air, and exhaust air.Ducts commonly also deliver ventilation air as part of the supply air. As such, air ducts are one method of ensuring acceptable indoor air quality as well as thermal comfort.

A duct system is also called ductwork. Planning (laying out), sizing, optimizing, detailing, and finding the pressure losses through a duct system is called duct design.

The duct, or air distribution, the system used in cooling and heating your home is a collection of tubes that distribute the heated or cooled air to the different rooms. This branching network of round or rectangular tubes—usually constructed of sheet metal, fiberglass board, or a flexible plastic-and-wire composite—is found within your home. The duct system is designed to supply rooms with air that is “conditioned”—that is, heated or cooled by the heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) equipment—and to circulate or return the same volume of air back to the HVAC equipment.

Typical air-duct systems lose 25 to 40% of the heating or cooling energy put out by the cooling and heating system. Leaks, one way in which conditioned air is lost in the duct system, make the HVAC system work harder, thus increasing your utility bill. In addition, duct leakage can lessen comfort and endanger your health and safety.

Your duct system has two main air-transfer systems—supply and return. The supply side delivers the conditioned air to the home through individual room registers—what you feel blowing out of the registers. The return side withdraws inside air and delivers it to the air handler of your central system. All of the air drawn into the return duct(s) is conditioned and should be delivered back to the supply registers.