Air Duct Repair in Los Gatos, CA

Air duct repair in Los Gatos homes

One room stays hot. The register barely moves air. You hear the blower working hard anyway. Most of the time the duct is disconnected at the boot. Flex pulls free at the collar, and conditioned air dumps straight into the attic. The return then drags attic dust and loose insulation fiber back inside. That is the gray film on your register grille.

The repair depends on what is up there. Older ranch tracts here run galvanized trunk and round branch, often 1950s through the 1970s. Cloth tape on those joints dries out and lets go. Pre-1975 plenums sometimes carry asbestos-containing tape, which is not cut or scraped. It gets identified and left for abatement. Later homes have R-4.2 or R-6 flex with sagging bellies and crushed radius turns. Sag gets strapped and re-suspended, not just taped.

Crawlspace runs under raised foundations downtown and in the foothills fail differently. Wet winters put condensation on supply runs, and microbial growth follows. Rodents chew insulation and nest inside the liner. That duct gets replaced, not patched.

Undersized single central returns are common in these tracts. Sealing supplies alone can make a leaky filter rack worse. We check return path before touching anything downstream.