Air Duct Repair in Bodega Bay, CA

Weak vents, musty air, and the duct faults behind them

One room stays cold. The register barely breathes. Something smells like crawlspace when the heat starts. Those three complaints usually trace to the same place. Not the furnace. The ducts between it and you.

Bodega Bay and west-county homes carry mixed duct populations. Pre-1970 houses have galvanized sheet metal trunk-and-branch, often crawlspace runs under raised foundations, with original wrap deteriorating. Tract and later construction uses insulated flex in attics. Old farmhouses and additions got retrofit ducting squeezed wherever it fit. Each fails differently. Flex sags and kinks in hot attics. Metal boots shake loose at the floor and dump conditioned air under the house. Rodents nest in low crawl runs and drag insulation with them.

Repair means finding the leak, not wrapping tape over it. Tape dries and peels. Sealed joints and proper strap support hold. A boot reattached to the subfloor holds too. Return plenums and filter slots in older tract homes are a separate problem. Undersized or leaking, they pull attic and crawlspace air straight into supply.

You can check some yourself. Lift a register and look for gray streaking at the seams. Feel for airflow at the boot edge.

Torn inner liner down a whole flex run is not worth patching. Replace that run.