4 Reasons to Avoid DIY HVAC Ductwork

There are a few DIY HVAC jobs that you can definitely handle on your own without the help of an HVAC professional. For instance, it’ll be simple enough for you to replace your HVAC air filter yourself.

But there are also quite a few DIY HVAC jobs that you shouldn’t ever attempt to do on your own. DIY HVAC ductwork is an excellent example of this.

It doesn’t matter if you’re thinking about installing new HVAC ductwork in your home, repairing your existing HVAC ductwork, or trying to clean your HVAC ductwork. Doing just about any DIY HVAC ductwork job is almost always a terrible idea. You should have HVAC home maintenance professionals take care of whatever needs to be done instead.

Here are four reasons to avoid DIY HVAC ductwork at all costs.

1. It’s Going to Be Difficult for You to Get Access to HVAC Ductwork

In order for you to do DIY HVAC ductwork, you’re going to need to try to get access to your HVAC ductwork. And this is not usually going to be easy for you to do.

As you probably know by now, your HVAC ductwork isn’t typically out in the open. It tends to run behind the walls and underneath the floors in your home. As a result, it can be extremely challenging to access it if you don’t know what you’re doing.

This is the first reason why you should have HVAC professionals work on your home’s HVAC ductwork rather than trying to do it yourself. You’re going to get frustrated within just a few minutes once you see how difficult it can be to find and access the ductwork in your home.

You might end up getting stuck down in your crawlspace if you go down there to get a better look at some of your HVAC ductwork. It’ll be at that point that you’ll wish you would have just sucked it up and called on an HVAC expert for assistance.

2. You Might Not Know What to Do With HVAC Ductwork If You Do Get to It

Let’s say that you are theoretically able to get access to the part of your HVAC ductwork that you need to work on to maintain it. Then what?

You might be thrilled by the fact that you were able to find it. But the truth of the matter is that that’s only the first part of the job. In addition to finding the ductwork that needs to be repaired or maintained, you’re also going to have to actually work on it.

If you haven’t ever worked on the HVAC ductwork in your home before, this could throw you for a huge loop. You might not know how to deal with ductwork accordingly when it needs some TLC.

You might be able to figure out what to do by reading a home maintenance guide. But it would be so much easier to bypass the DIY HVAC ductwork process and rely on a professional HVAC company to help you.

3. You Could End Up Damaging HVAC Ductwork While Working on It

It might seem as though it would be very hard to do any damage to HVAC ductwork. It is, after all, made out of metal and built to last.

To some degree, you’ll be right in this assumption. You’re not going to be able to do too much damage to HVAC ductwork while you’re repairing it or maintaining it. But even still, one wrong move could break a portion of your HVAC ductwork beyond repair.

And if you break a portion of your HVAV ductwork, it might mean shutting down your HVAC system as a whole for a little while. This will prevent you from achieving home climate control and result in your home being too hot or too cold until you’re able to hire an HVAC company to step in and help.

Wouldn’t it be better to just do this from the beginning and avoid putting your HVAC ductwork at risk? It’s one more reason to steer clear of doing any DIY HVAC ductwork in your home.

4. You Might Cost Yourself Money by Attempting to Do DIY HVAC Ductwork

It’s not hard to figure out why so many homeowners attempt to give DIY HVAC ductwork a try. They do it because they want to save themselves some money.

When you install HVAC ductwork on your own, it’ll cost somewhere between $100 and $2,000 on average depending on how much ductwork you actually install. But when you pay to have professional duct replacement done, you could be looking at paying anywhere from $1,000 to $5,000 on average.

That being said, you could also end up costing yourself money by taking the DIY HVAC ductwork approach. If you install new HVAC ductwork in your home or replace HVAC ductwork in it and don’t do it right, you’re going to have to spend the initial $100 to $2,000 plus whatever it will cost to have an HVAC company step in and finish the job off right.

You should show off your DIY home maintenance talents elsewhere and leave HVAC ductwork to the pros. They’ll get a job done right from the start and save you money in the long run. 

DIY HVAC Ductwork Isn’t Something You Should Ever Try

If you’re kicking around the idea of doing DIY HVAC ductwork, we know exactly what’s going through your mind right now. You’re wondering, “How hard could it be?”

Unfortunately for you, the answer is usually, “Way harder than you think!” It’s why taking on a DIY HVAC ductwork job is not going to be in your best interests.

As we alluded to earlier, there are some HVAC-related jobs around the house that you can DIY if you want. But DIY HVAC ductwork isn’t one of them. You’ll be asking for trouble if you don’t take this advice.

Would you like to get some more tips on maintaining your HVAC system and other systems within your home? Look for them in the other home improvement articles that we’ve posted on our blog.