Service guide
Duct sealing
Duct sealing treats leaks across the whole system. A good job starts and ends with a test.
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Written by HYRE HVAC Research Desk Primary-source research, data analysis and fact checking
The short version
Duct sealing closes leaks in ductwork with mastic or foil tape, often after a duct leakage test. ENERGY STAR estimates a typical house loses about 20 to 30 percent of the air moving through its ducts to leaks, holes and poor connections.
How a good duct sealing job works
A technician measures leakage before work. See duct leakage.
With mastic or foil tape rated for ducts.
To show the result.
Questions to ask
Sealing can change pressures in the house.
Why it matters
Leaky ducts waste heated and cooled air and can pull in dust and fumes. ENERGY STAR links sealing and insulating to comfort and bills. For spot repairs see heating duct repair, and for cleaning myths see is air duct cleaning necessary.
What owners can do, and what needs a pro
You can seal joints you can reach in a basement with mastic or foil tape rated for ducts, never cloth duct tape. Attic and crawlspace ducts, the testing and any work near furnace venting are better left to a contractor.
After sealing, ask the contractor to check that gas appliances still vent properly, because a tighter duct system can change pressures in the home. ENERGY STAR's duct sealing page lists the signs that ducts are performing poorly: high bills, hard-to-condition rooms and stuffy rooms.
What drives the price of duct sealing
HyreHVAC does not publish a price for duct sealing. We do not yet hold enough sourced, dated quotes to give a figure we can stand behind.
Access to the ducts, the amount of leakage, insulation and testing are the main drivers. Our HVAC cost guides explain each driver, and the energy savings calculator lets you work through your own numbers.
What happens after you ask
You fill in the HVAC options form with the job and your zip code. HyreHVAC is a publisher, not a contractor, and contractor matching is still being built. Until it is, treat the form as an inquiry. Keep getting your own written quotes and check each contractor’s licence with your state board.
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Tell us about the work
Three short steps: the job, your home, and how to reach you. Nothing goes to an HVAC company unless you agree.
A person reads it and replies, free and with no obligation. Matching is not live yet, so this is not a quote. If you smell gas or a CO alarm sounds, leave the house and call 911 or your gas utility first.
Get HVAC Options
A person at HyreHVAC reads the request and replies. Matching with contractors is not live yet, so this is not a quote.
Questions
Is duct sealing worth it?
Can I seal ducts myself?
What is aerosol duct sealing?
Does it help air quality?
Written and audited by
HYRE HVAC Research Desk
Primary-source research, data analysis and fact checking
We are a research desk, not a sales floor. We read the federal microdata file, the statute or the manufacturer data sheet ourselves, and we publish the figure with the document it came from and the date we retrieved it.
Where a number cannot be traced to a primary source, we publish the shorter page and say what we could not verify.
The counts below are generated from the published pages themselves, last counted November 12, 2026, and they are what we have actually published rather than what we intend to.
- 18
- studies published
- 15
- federal sources read and cited
- 15
- studies published with their full dataset as CSV
- 51
- jurisdictions reproduced against EIA’s own tables
How this desk works
- Primary sources only. Federal data comes from the agency that collects it, in the file that agency publishes. We do not cite an article that cites a source; we download the source and compute the figure ourselves.
- We validate against the agency before we publish. First, we use each federal microdata file to reproduce the agency’s own published tables. Our cooling research reproduces EIA’s state estimates and standard errors for all 51 jurisdictions. That check caught a variance formula that was off by a factor of four.
- Every estimate carries its uncertainty. These are survey figures, not counts. Standard errors are computed from the replicate weights the federal file supplies and printed beside the estimate. An estimate too imprecise to publish is reported as such rather than printed.
- Nothing is typed by hand. Prose, tables and charts all read from one dataset built by script, so a number in a sentence and the same number in the table below it cannot disagree.
- We publish the data, not just the conclusion. 15 of our 18 studies offer the full computed table as a CSV download on the page, so you can check the analysis or disagree with it. A study without a row-level dataset gets no download link and claims none in its structured data.
- We correct in public. Where we have published a figure wrongly we fix the figure, rewrite any analysis that rested on it rather than patching the number underneath it, and leave a dated correction note on the page.
- We do not install or sell HVAC equipment, and we take no payment for placement, ranking or a favorable mention. Nobody buys a position on this site.
Data as of October 26, 2026. Authorship on this site is organizational: the analysis belongs to the desk rather than to a named individual, and we do not publish credentials we do not hold. Our editorial policy sets out how we source, date and correct what we publish.
Sources & retrieval dates
HyreHVAC is a publisher. We do not install, repair or inspect HVAC equipment and hold no contractor licence. Nothing here replaces an on-site diagnosis by a licensed contractor. Sources are cited with the date they were checked.