11/09/2026
You're literally throwing money into your attic every single month.
In a lot of Lake Charles and Sulphur attics, the leak costing you money is sitting at one end of a duct where nobody has looked in years.
ENERGY STAR estimates the typical duct system loses somewhere between a fifth and nearly a third of the air it moves through leaks and poorly connected ducts. In an attic that hits 130 degrees, a supply leak dumps air you already paid to cool into the hottest space in the house. A return leak is worse in our climate. It pulls hot, wet attic air into the system, which adds latent load the coil has to wring out before it can cool anything.
Finding a leak in a system with hundreds of feet of duct is hard, but leaks almost always start at one of the two ends. One is the boot, the box where the duct meets the register in the room. The other is the plenum, the box on the air handler where the runs take off. Those joints carry the most stress, and that's where tape lets go first. A dirty streak on the insulation at a joint is usually the giveaway, because air moving through a gap leaves dust behind.
That's why we're in there every six months. We dig around both ends with a flashlight and a camera, so a small leak gets sealed with mastic before it turns horrendous.
What's the highest electric bill you've ever opened in the summer? Drop it below. I bet your attic had something to do with it.
- Jonathan Qualls, MBA
S&S HVAC - “When you want it done right”
