ANST - Duct tape good for almost anything but ducts, study says

[Michael Heydon]

PACIFIC GROVE, Calif. (AP) — Duct tape may be useful for all manner of home
repairs — except to seal ducts.
The familiar sticky silver tape can be used to patch a wall, mend a rip in
your jeans and even hold the bumper on your car. But researchers at Lawrence
Berkeley National Laboratory said duct tapes were never before tested to see
how well they seal together sections of metal ducts that carry hot or cold
air.
"What we found was that duct tape almost always failed,'' said Max Sherman,
a physicist who leads the group studying the energy performance of
buildings, said at a conference Monday. "It failed reliably and often quite
catastrophically.''
Energy experts say 30 percent of the hot or cold is lost on the way to its
destination, and failed tape could be responsible for part of that loss.
A tape maker was surprised by the new research. "I can honestly say I have
not had one field failure come back to my laboratory,'' said Jerry M. Serra,
vice pesident for research at Kendall Polyken in Massachusetts. "Maybe
they're just not complaining, I don't know.''



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