Using Thermography to Reduce Home Energy Waste

One of the best ways to find out how your home is wasting energy is to get a professional home energy audit by a reputable company such as Dr. Energy Saver. One of the main tests that your auditors will use to gather this information is a thermography test. This test may also be called a thermographic inspection, an infrared scan or thermal scanning. Regardless of the name that it goes by, the purpose of this test is to use infrared lighting technology to measure the surface temperatures in your home. This is a great way for an auditor to accurately assess where in the home more insulation is needed in order to truly reduce energy waste.

There are two types of thermography scans. The more common scan is the interior scan where infrared lighting is used throughout the inside of your home to look for heat loss. It makes sense to check for this loss from the inside out because of the fact that the heat may be lost somewhere inside the walls and therefore not escaping into the outdoors but still not working efficiently in the home. However, certain home designs and weather conditions do make it possible that an exterior thermal scan is occasionally the better option. Your professional auditor should explain why he is doing an external scan if that’s what he chooses for your home.

If you have more than one thermal scan done in your lifetime then you may notice that different auditors use different scanning technology. That’s because there are a few different tools that work for this job. A point radiometer (or spot radiometer) measures temperature at a single point so the auditor will move around the house registering each point along the way. A thermal line scanner will scan the temperature of an area across a line as the tool pans the room. The most effective tool is the thermal imaging camera, which is the one that most auditors use to get a truly detailed picture of home heat loss.

Regardless of the type of camera used or whether it’s done from the inside or the outside, the process of the thermal scan is basically the same. Infrared photography (both still photography and video photography) is used to scan the entire house. The images will record temperature variations; there will be white images where it is hot and black images where it is cool. The information can then be analyzed to easily see where heat is building up in the home and where it is being lost. A scan of the roof can clearly tell you that heat is escaping at the top of your home, for example. You use this information to figure out where you need better home insulation. Installing this insulation in the right areas will prevent you from wasting energy and help save money on your energy bill.

For more information on home energy audits please read the other articles in this series.

Part One: Home Energy Audits Make Saving Energy Easy

Part Three: Why Home Energy Auditors Use Blower Door Testing

Part Four: Using the PFT Air Infiltration Measurement Technique in a Home Energy Audit