Infrared Scanning

One of the key components of our home energy audits is infrared thermography. Infrared scanning or thermal imaging consists of a thorough visual inspection of a home, including the basement, attic, joints and penetrations with an infrared camera. It takes any interpretation out of locating the drafts and leaks in a home by providing the exact temperature of various spots within the home, and, depending on the device used, providing you, with a precise visual representation of any trouble spots in your home’s thermal envelope. It allows us to log any special points of concern as we inspect your home and serve as a reference as we prioritize our recommendations for air sealing or insulation work.

We identify spots where your house is losing heating and cooling dollars, and gives you clear directions for fixing them. Some of the imperfections in your home’s thermal envelope will be obvious to you like around windows and doors. But chances are, there will be some big surprises, too. That’s part of what makes infrared imaging so valuable – you might discover that the constant draft in your living room could be taken care of with a simple bead of caulk along the baseboard, or that your perennial ice dam could be forever prevented by insulating a hot water pipe in the attic. It’s like an x-ray for your home.

One last thing to keep in mind when scheduling an infrared audit is that for best results, we like to see a large temperature differential (delta T) between indoors and outdoors. This allows us to best view the areas of concern and pinpoint the exact causes. In Wisconsin our seasonal fluctuations in temperature are more than ample to provide excellent examples of thermal differentiation for our infrared scans.