Having this tool has proved to be quite helpful in finding drafty areas of the house. I used it at my last home and really helped me see the difference when I got new windows and doors. This camera will show heat as an image, and can really help show what parts of the home need some improvement. Mostly doors, and windows.. places where the outside and inside meet.
These doors are starting to show their age, not closing very well when its been wet outside. And I can feel spots of air coming through. So seeing it on the FLIR camera really helps me see the gaps better.
I think these windows are not very energy efficient, probably worth upgrading eventually to trap in more heat. Compared to my last home the deep color of these windows tell me how much of the heat is being lost.
Where the windows close at the bottom seems some air is getting through, need to open them up and check it out to see what could be letting air through.
In the bathroom we have one large clear cube type window (not sure what they are called exactly) and one normal window. It looks like the cube type lets much more heat out than the standard window to the left. But even that one has some gaps as can be seen by the dark splotches.
It is hard to say what is causing this, maybe on the inside there needs to be some more caulking. Or possibly outside a panel needs to be fixed on the house.
Some cold spots on the walls, maybe some missing insulation. It was also a wet day so maybe some moisture is finding its way in. Something I should investigate further.
Double doors out to the back porch need some work as well, they rub real bad and under we can see they are quite drafty. I can see myself replacing all these doors and windows in the future.
With double doors where they meet they sometimes need a gap to work right. So air gets in, very cold 40F air.. lol
With the room being around 65F the windows are quite cold around 50F.
In the wash room, where the water comes in we can see the heat loss.
The floor by the dining room seems to allow a lot of heat loss, need to look into insulating that more.
Going down to the basement we can see the outside wall being quite cold.. just bare concrete.
The basement doors are in the worst shape, dry rot has completely destroyed the bottom of the door frame. So I stuffed carpet padding under them and closed the doors, helps a lot until I can fix the water intrusion issue by the basement doors.
It is only a temporary fix to stuff under the door. As we can see its doing a poor job keeping the heat in.
The pipes in the house we can tell which are hot water and which are cold.
Lines going to the hot water heater can be easily IDed.
My hot water heater can be seen with its line going up into the ceiling.
Our refrigerant lines can also be seen, since our HVAC units are dual mode they can heat as well. So we can see the heat being drawn in from the outside units to go into the air handler.
It makes following the lines quite easy.
The electrical system of the house can be seen as well on the thermal camera. Being able to tell which circuits have more load on them than others. That bright one is probably for my grow lights.
Looking at above the circuit breaker box we can see one of the lines is quite warm compared to the others.
We can follow the wire just like the hot pipes and see where it goes.
Getting closer to the panels it makes it easy to figure out which breaker has a lot of load on it.
The other basement door, it has issues too when we get heavy rains. So the wood around the frame has taken on moisture, and rotted away allowing air in.
Looking at cracks in the wall we can see if air is passing through, telling me its real bad. This is one of the worse of the cracks I have around my house down in the basement, to me it does not look too bad. But I can check out it again to see if it changes.