Working on the join.
We just enjoyed a visit from our friends Jan and Mike from Indiana and got some good help and ideas from them. They wanted to work on the house. What are good friends for anyway? So we redid one of the most difficult connections in the duct work with stainless bands. Of course it was not an easy task.
Stainless steel bands
First the gorilla tape I had used instead of the foil tape had to be cut to open the insulation. Then the duct itself was only taped here and not zip tied. A mistake since I thought I had zip tied all the connections, but this one was just taped.
Once the insulation was separated and the pipe exposed I removed the tape holding the flex ducts onto the connecting duct. Then the bands had to be installed over the flex duct and onto the connector. That was not easy because the band is just slightly bigger than the pipe and connecting it while it is on the pipe was impossible for me. So I tried a larger clamp but it would not get tight enough to hold the pipe. Finally I started the ten inch band first and slipped it over one end of the connection. Then it was just a matter of squeezing the flex duct under the band all around the pipe. And it tightened!
The connection was then taped over the bands to make it air tight. I don’t know why I decided to do the bands first and then the tape. In most cases I did the taping first and then secured with the bands! The last step was retaping the insulation together. This time I used the silver ducting tape.
Taped bands