Introduction
We have access to a thermal camera and can loan this out to members of the community. If you are interested then please contact us: ecofriendlygarforth@gmail.com.
We are very grateful to Jon Blaza, MEng CEng Retrofit Consultant Chartered Engineer from Ring Tree for allowing us to use some of his thermal images in this guide.
Hints and Tips
General Advice
Text under construction.
Interpreting Images
There are some things to look out for when examining images you are looking at thermal images of a building…
Common pitfalls
This picture shows someone outside looking at a window and you can see their heat being reflected by the window, so it looks like I am inside! Be aware that glass reflects infra-red (heat) and can mislead you..
The contrast added by the camera makes the walls of this house look hot and leaking heat! The problem is the sky in the picture is at -50°C so the wall is “relatively” warm!
Other Scenarios
Bay windows in the room appear to be lacking insulation to the ceilings / flat roofs. As illustrated by the cold patches on the ceiling.
Poor or uneven insulation in the loft. This shows cool areas across the ceiling of a bedroom where the insulation coverage is much thinner along the edges. In this case due to difficult to reach voids in the attic.
This image shows a potential problem with an attic room (RiR – Room in Roof). Here each downlight is associated with an uninsulated area of the horizontal ceiling.
Have a look in the attic at how the insulation is distributed.
The thermal imaging here suggests that there may be some localised areas where the cavity wall insulation is absent (e.g. through installation problems or subsequent settlement of material).
The curved bay windows at the ground floor level front and back of the house are solid 9″ brick walls and therefore could not receive the retrofit cavity wall insulation. These walls therefore lose more heat than the main external walls and are colder internally.