Thursday, October 12, 2006

HEAT LOSS WE CAN SEE

WHAT IS THERMOGRAPHY?

Simply stated, everything radiates heat. Photographing this heat is thermography. Of particular interest to us is where our houses are radiating heat. You’ll be surprised how much is leaving without warming you up first.

On the side of the house you can see the warm
walls (light color) under the window and below
the electric meter. Both areas had insulation
removed and not replaced after work was done.

This is a tremendous amount of heat leaving
the attic. Unfortunately it’s very typical and
costing you a lot of money!
The reverse happens in the summer
as hot air radiates through an attic hatch
and now you have to cool it.

Thermal images can pinpoint the largest amounts of heat loss
and make repairs quicker and less costly. This improperly
installed insulation was not visible from the attic due to storage
and is allowing a good amount of heat to leave the house.


Thermal imaging is extremely useful to quickly determine areas of large heat loss and gain, but to fully understand how much this is costing you, how much it will cost to repair, and how it effects your indoor air quality, you will need to have a full energy audit performed.

ENERGY AUDITS are a comprehensive evaluation of your home to help determine how much air is moving through the house to the outside (taking conditioned -heated or cooled- air out) and forcing outside unconditioned air into the house to replace it.

This airflow is extremely important as the house does have to ventilate in order to remove indoor pollution (we do have to breath after all) so we don’t want the house too tight. An important part of the audit is to determine where the replacement air is coming from. We need to control the airflow so we don’t bring more polluted air into the house. The garage, unheated basement, crawlspace, and our heating appliance fluepipe can bring air into the house that is deadly. THAT’S A BIG PART OF AN ENERGY AUDIT! It’s great to save money and help save the planet by reducing fuel consumption, but it’s also about the health of you and your family.