Cold in the Basement and Hot Upstairs? Enter Magic Fairy Dust…

After years of living in old Victorian houses with uneven heat and A/C distribution, we thought our problems were solved last year when we moved into our new house. Brand new A/C unit. Brand new duct work. Problem solved, right? We imagined moving between the basement, the first and the second floor of our house with ease. No more basement sweaters. No more sweating through the night.

So it came as quite a surprise this summer when the usual problem surfaced. While our new A/C pumped fabulous cold air into the basement (making cashmere sweaters mandatory in July), it was still sweltering hot upstairs. WTF?

So we embarked on a search for a solution to this cold basement/hot upstairs dilemma…AND WE FOUND IT! It cost $1,200 but it just may have been one of the best investments we’ve ever made in our house. Case-in-point: I’m writing this blog from the basement – in a T-shirt – while the rest of the house is the SAME temperature! Crazy!

The answer to our problem lay in a relatively new technology in Canada – Aeroseal – and it involves sealing ductwork from the INSIDE. There are a few companies that offer it in the GTA – we called Aeroseal Solutions.

While the process is quite technical, I like to sum it up like this: some magical fairy dust gets blown through your ducts, sealing all the holes where air escapes and your house magically becomes comfortable.

For the more technically-inclined:

Aeroseal Duct Sealing is a patented breakthrough technology that tackles leaks from the inside out. Aeroseal software allows the technician to accurately measure the duct leakage in residential homes and commercial buildings. The Aeroseal process puts escaping air under pressure and causes polymer particles to stick first to the edges of a leak, then to each other until the leak is closed.      – Aeroseal Website

The Aeroseal process is relatively painless:

1. They cover the wall registers so that air only escapes through the leaks
2. They inject sealant into the ducts where it magically binds to the leak
3. Small aerosol particles of magic dust are kept suspended in the airflow by continuous air movement
4. As the air stream exits through a leak, the particles collide with and adhere to the leak edges

The whole process took about 7 hours and the house had to be vacant during the second half of the process (so the dogs chilled at our new office).

We noticed the results almost instantly. They sent a fancy report the following day with the results for our house: a 28% improvement in our heating and cooling capacity and an incredible reduction of 79% of the duct leakage!

So if you’re suffering from uneven heat and A/C distribution, it’s worth giving one of the Aeroseal providers a call. We don’t work for them and we don’t get any $$ for recommending them. They just solved a problem a lot of us Toronto home owners have and I thought it was worth sharing.