Exposed duct ideas

We're interested in hearing people's thoughts and ideas about builds in areas that have a lot of exposed ductwork.

One thing we've done in the past is paint them. Painting tapa-like patterns is a go, as well as painting in a color that will blend into the area or make it less obtrusive, such as black or dark brown.

But we're looking for more ideas. We have an area with a lot of exposed HVAC ducts, basically two stretches in parallel, both the supply and the return lines. They are currently painted white.

Now we've got an idea that's beyond paint. We want to repaint them, first, with a smeared up blend of browns and blues and greens to them give that underwater beam look. But then also, we thought wouldn't it be great if they could be draped in fishnet? Especially of various colors? And then, the space between the ducts and all the fishnet would be the perfect place to fit all kinds of things from shells and starfish to postcards and even small Treasurecraft ashtrays and whatnot. We could even create fake barnacle colonies and affix them with magnets.

This would be totally fine most of the year when the furnace isn't in service, or when the air conditioning is on, but of course in winter when the heat is going it's probably not a good idea to have the blazing hot metal ducts draped with fish netting. Right? We briefly considered plastic fishnet (like the garden mesh bird netting stuff you can get), especially because like regular fishnet it's available in multiple colors like black, brown, turquoise, green and orange -- but again, probably not a good idea to have a thermoplastic permanently fixed to the heating ducts.

So the best we've come up with so far is to use thin wire chicken mesh, like this stuff:

Not too thrilled about this, for one thing it won't have the colors that real fishnet or the plastic stuff will have, painting it seems to be troublesome and might not be very successful, so we're not convinced it's the way forward.

If you visit my post in the home tiki bar section "Cannibal Club", you'll see where I hid my ducting in faux wooden crates. If your ducting is suspended you could use netting to make it look like the crates are suspended cargo......just a thought.

"probably not a good idea to have the blazing hot metal ducts"

Well, I don't know how hot your heater is but would doubt that it is hot enough to start a fire that way. But then I don't want you to burn your house and blame my advice as well.

There is a fire retardant you can buy to treat well everything with they use it on theater props and such.

The Kahiki lights I bought at the end some of them had charred bamboo and wood where the light bulb would be right on the wood and bamboo and they did not catch fire after all those years, and they had colored bulbs many times and those burn hotter than regular bulbs.

Sounds like you have some good ideas for it already.

If you visit my post in the home tiki bar section "Cannibal Club", you'll see where I hid my ducting in faux wooden crates. If your ducting is suspended you could use netting to make it look like the crates are suspended cargo......just a thought.

Very clever hide job! Ours are pretty flush with the ceiling ... but you have me thinking about other ways to "hide" them by turning them into something else.

That was actually the reason, years and years ago, we painted them white -- we were thinking about the shape from The Surf in Treasure Island, Florida:

Well, I don't know how hot your heater is but would doubt that it is hot enough to start a fire that way. But then I don't want you to burn your house and blame my advice as well.

The ducts in question are the ones in the basement that come straight out of the furnace. When the heat's on full blast, you can only keep your hand on them for a few seconds, like seriously only two or three, before it becomes way too hot to touch.

Interesting point about the Kahiki lights. We do soak everything in that fire retardant. Traditional fishnet would look killer, especially as envisioned as a sort of ceiling holding all kinds of flotsam and jetsam, but we need to be absolutely sure it would be ok.

Might be a bit harder but you can make a net out of chain.

But then whatever you put in the net would make you nervous too.

Not saying it's a good idea but the flash point for cotton (temp at which it catches fire) is about 410F, I doubt that your ducts are that hot. If you can hold your hand to it for a few seconds it's well under 200F. You could also hang your net so it's a few inches from the duct for extra safety and/or use fire retardant.

You can buy barnacles and glue them to magnets using high temp glue (epoxy?). Or have some made from ceramic if you know a guy (I have actually made fake ceramic barnacles and I work for cheap - like cost of materials and postage). Shells, ceramic, and metal are all materials that would work well in your net with no danger of damage.

The most important thing to remember when doing your own duct work is to make sure that you fill out a Form 27 B/6, otherwise you might get an unpleasant midnight visit from Central Services.

Funny, MrBaliHai walks into a thread and suddenly we are hearing "Brazil" in the background. Nice tune ...

MadDogMike, that sounds amazingly cool, we are going to take you up on that!

We think keeping the netting a few inches away is a common sense win-win.

MadDogMike DELIVERED! Thanks, Mike, these ceramics are unbelievable. They're seriously amazing: barnacles, barnacles with shells, a crawling nudibranch, and feather duster worm (with real feather! which moves just perfectly with whatever light breeze)!

We had to put them in their new home, even though the new home is not 'home' quite yet. Painting, nets, everything else is going to be the first tiki project of 2023. But as you can see, they're already excited! And we're happy and proud to have MDM's art in our space!

Awesome! You are going to have the coolest ductwork in all of Tikidom!

I agree. That ductwork is going to be a showpiece once all is said and done!

You know if you drill a hole in the duct work the air that comes out will make that feather move.

And you could put a cork in the hole when not wanting the hole to blow.

Going to be great.