ANST - (Fwd) Well, we all know what it is good for...

[j'lynn yeates]

thought you folk might enjoy this one ...

'wolf

------- Forwarded Message Follows -------
From:           	"Weaver, Ellsworth III" <JEW1 at pge.com>
Subject:        	Well, we all know what it is good for...
Date sent:      	Wed, 29 Jul 1998 06:43:46 -0700

WASHINGTON - Amateur handymen the world over use duct tape to fix 
whatever
ails their furniture, cars or bikes. Use it for everything, they say. 

Everything, that is, except a duct. 

Researchers at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in Livermore,
Calif., put 19 different duct sealants through a rigorous aging test -
sealing up sections of air ducts with different adhesives and blasting the
ducts with alternating bursts of hot and cold air. 

"The only one that really failed was duct tape," says Max Sherman,
co-author of the study appearing this month's Home Energy. Within a week,
duct tape "just fell off," leaking more than 10% of the duct's air stream.
Most of the other sealants, including foil tape and aerosol sealants,
lasted three months. 

"We tried to give it the most extreme tests we could within rational
parameters," Sherman says, noting that temperatures ranged between 10 
and
180 degrees Fahrenheit. 

So why couldn't duct tape take the heat? Sherman surmises that heat
softens the duct tape's rubber adhesive, causing it to separate from the
fiber backing. 

But experts have always had their suspicions about the handyman's silver
miracle tape. 

"There's different materials out there and different procedures (for
repairing ducts)," says Hank Rutkowski, technical director of the Air
Conditioning Contractors of America. Duct tape, he says, "is not
considered to be the best." 



... When we hunt, we all function with one mind
... - Boingo, Pedestrian Wolves
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