Postivie Pressure home test/infrared camera

[mbcijim]

I have a guy coming to my house in early November. He is going to positively pressure the house and then look at it with an infrared camera. It's a new home. I expect it to be pretty tight, but you never know.

He is going to be doing some commercial work for me so it is sorta/near free but would normally cost around $400.

Does anyone have any experience with these? What were the results? Any tips?

 

[mbcijim]

I hear you. Thanks.

We are going to do it on an early November morning. We could have done it now, but the temp difference is not ideal for the camera. I will be 30-40*F here at that time, and 70*F or so in the house.

 

[KeithO]

The most common professional cameras are made by FLIR. Pretty expensive, we bought one a couple of years ago at work, cost $250k. There has been a proliferation of "cheap" cameras in recent years. Can't tell what to expect from them. This kind of study is ideally done mid winter to get the greatest possible temperature differentials. Here in MI that may be 80F indoors to 20F outdoors = 50F differential. Its a pretty small differential to measure really accurately. The colder the day, the better it works.

A few things to note: The pictures the camera produces shows the apparent temperature distribution with the camera calibrated for a particular surface emisivity. To get the camera reading and the world in alignment, one will usually take a surface temperature reading on a piece of black electricians tape with a contact thermometer, then shoot it with the camera and adjust the emisivity parameter until the results match. The caveat here is that some objects that are highly reflective will have a much lower emisivity and the camera will report temperatures much higher than they really are. Even the best windows have a pretty pathetic R value, so they should be "glowing" in the images. The thing to look for are "hotspots" where they should not be, indicating air leaks or missing insulation or caulking.

 

[mbcijim]

Thanks for all the info guys.

The cameraman is a full time guy in this field of work. I hired him 2 weeks or so and he was pretty adamant about waiting so I think his camera should work well with a 40* difference, or at least he thinks so.

 

[Highbeam]

I had the camera thing done by a local utility. Apparently, any water leaks will show up on this camera as well so hope for rain before the show. We found some poor insulation and even a birdsnest.