Daily Home Renovation Tips

Now that I has sufficiently, I think, covered up all of the possible air leaks in the ceiling vent within the basement room in our home which has the drywall ceiling, I still needed to install the vent cover.

If you recall from previous articles, I could not simply install a traditional vent register as it would not fit inside the vent opening in the ceiling. And, using a vent register which is traditionally used for a cold air return did not provide any area inside the vent opening with which I could secure it.

So, I went back to the solution used before, that being to cut a piece of wood and place it inside the ends of the vent opening in the ceiling. This would then allow me to screw a hole in these pieces of wood which I could use to secure the vent cover.

One problem; only one end was sufficiently flat for me to insert a piece of wood, which I did from the picture above. The other end was not flat at all and I was not able to insert a second piece of wood. You can see it sticking out on the right side of the picture below.

 

Remember the inverted pieces of metallic duct tape which I had placed on the inside between the metallic vent boot and the wooden frame in the ceiling? Well, I thought that perhaps I had placed a sufficient amount of this at this other end such that it could possible hold the screw at that end of the vent cover. 

Well sort of. The air vent cover at the one end with the piece of wood was fully secured while the other end, the one not sufficiently flat to insert a piece of wood, was not securely held in place; there was about a 1/4 to a 1/2 inch gap between that end of the vent register and the ceiling vent opening.

In trying to achieve energy savings and be able to prevent heated air in the winter from going into this unused room, this would not be the answer.

Now what?

In the previous article, I had decided to use Polyken 360-17 duct tape to seal the leaks in the ceiling vent of one of our basement rooms, the one which had a drywall type of ceiling.

However, remember, the edges of the vent boot were rough and sharp, sufficiently sharp I felt that over time they might cut through one or two applications of the duct tape.

So, I first used two layers of the duct tape over the one side which had a finished, or smooth, edge, as shown on the right side of the picture below.

Next, after bending back as much as possible the unfinished edges of the other three sides of the vent boot, I decided to put several pieces of the duct tape, inversly rolled between the wooded vent frame and the metalic vent boot.

 

This was for a few purposes.

First, of course it would fill most of the space between the metalic vent boot and the wooden frame.

Second, it would reduce the amount of the sharp edges of the boot which would be exposed to the covering duct tape to reduce the likelihood of damage.

 

In the picture above you can see the finished product wherein I had then applied the metallic duct tape to the outside of the metallic boot.

So, what’s next? Simply reinstall the vent register and we’re done, right? Nope.