Insulation problems identified in an instant
February 12th 2007 It’s so much easier to conserve energy if you can sense it. For example, when lights and heating are left on in a high-rise, largely unattended office block that wastage is easily perceived. What we don’t see however, at least not to the naked eye, is energy loss through building defects such as badly fitted windows or poor insulation.
And, as was recently exposed on television by thermal imaging, those that should be the greatest ambassadors for energy conservation are often the worst offenders. The headquarters building of one of the UK’s leading electricity and gas suppliers was found to be wasting huge amounts of energy through poor insulation.
Thermography has evolved into one of the most valuable tools for building diagnostics as it allows the user to see this energy loss. And in its new ThermaCAM B640 infrared camera FLIR Systems takes this ability a stage further. This top-of-the-range building series camera now comes as standard with an insulation alarm as well as relative humidity and dew point alarms.
This separate function integrated in the new model allows the operator to determine immediately whether or not a building is well insulated. All that is required is for a temperature measurement of the outside face of a wall to be taken and a critical surface temperature factor applied. When the temperature is then taken of the inside face of the same wall the new feature will calculate which areas are inadequately insulated and highlight them in an alarm colour on the infrared image.
For further information, just  click here. More articles from Flir Systems Ltd: | 
