Thermal Imaging for Insulation

Our village has been awarded some funding recently by peoples ITV millions program for our community center. It meant we had to get together and vote for our village via phone over a single day. The number of telephone votes proved, that the village has a lot going for it, and a lot of spirit. Hopefully the Sustainable Cottenham project will see similar support. The part of the program that interests me is energy saving, in all it's forms.

The interesting bit for me at the moment is thermal insulation surveying, and a cool tool called a Thermal Imaging Camera - sometimes used in firefighting, electrical fault detection, and in building inspection.

The picture  left is the kind of thing the camera does. There are a number of conditions that need to be right for the survey to be effective, and even tools that can assist in amplifying the leak detection opportunities.
Aspects like:

• Rain
• wind
• Sunshine
• Heating not actually running

All mess with the survey, meaning it has to be

• Cold at night, or
• Overcast

I can only imagine, this survey - although lots of it is done indoors too will be a lot of hard difficult work. The survey is being assisted by the loan of the device from 'Carbon Footprint'.

Links:

• Transition Cambridge website 
• Thermal images from homes in Cambridge
• Cambridge Carbon Footprint