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OT - flex duct repair

P

Prawn Farmer

Member
About 35 years ago my wife and I sold a house with 2 acres that was located on part of our farm. We recently had a chance to buy it back and decided to rent it out. The previous owners installed a new high efficiency furnace/ central AC unit about 4 years ago. While inspecting under the cramped crawl space I noticed that there were several holes chewed all the way through the flex duct. Being an 116 year old southern home, it has oak joist and mains sitting on sandstone piers (no foundation). The access under there is pretty much limited to less than 10" so I'm sure there are other holes that I can't see or get to. Is there any way to retrofit flex duct or is this a lost cause that only $$$$ can cure?
 
Attach a thin nylon rope to the existing duct. Pull it out trailing the rope. attach new duct. Pull the rope. Find the foundation holes and cement them up. Jim
 
You need to find a small sheet metal worker! Were they insulated ducts? I would think with an open crawl space there would be a lot of wasted energy if they weren't. We have a crawl space with some flex duct but there is enough room to crawl most of it. In the part you can't crawl under the contractor couldn't figure out how to install ducts so they put baseboard electric in that room, that's OK for heating but doesn't air condition. I pre-assembled some long solid ducts and slid them in and then we pulled the boots up and nailed them, it can be done.
 
Wish it were that easy. The flex ducts are insulated and lined. LOL Kind of like repairing a tire with a tube by installing a patch on the outside of the tire only?
 
Sitting on sandstone piers & almost on the ground - no foundation. Did find a possum skull under there. Looks like there was some 1/4" cement board used around some of the perimeter as underpinning many years ago. I'll have to see if that is still available or maybe use some of that fake galvanized block underpinning or some pole barn metal since it won't show under the huge north and east side porches. I'm wondering if your idea with the rope is how the HVAC people ran the flex duct to begin with.
 
The old cement board was a product called Transite and supposedly contained asbestos. I don't know if they revised the product to eliminate the asbestos or not.

Maybe Hardyboard (sp?) would be the current choice.

Myron
 
I had a similar problem with plastic flex duct I used for a bathroom air vent. Mice chewed a hole in the bottom of pipe where the condensation in the winter collected and the water got the bath ceiling wet. So I had to cut the drywall ceiling out, used wire to pull the flex duct hole close. I have metal duct tape, made a repair, rolled the hose over to put hole on top and end of proplem.

Good chance your issue was caused by mice, repairing it is just short term. You may need to replace with metal duct which will be expensive and fun. Think about it, your hvac is only 4 years old and already you have a problem. Unless you fix the cause, fixing the issue is short term at best. Take wire to pull the hole closed and get metal duct tape, regular duct tape won't hold up.
 
You can pull new duct by attaching the old to the new and pulling the old out sort of like a fish tape. Do it slowly and without much force. I have done that to old homes(once ina wall).
 
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