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Infrared heat detectors: Cut your heating and cooling costs using this device and some easy tips by Robin Green
An infrared gun can help you get a full understanding of where your home is losing heat in winter, or gaining it in summer. The more you know about where heat is entering or leaving your house, the more effective you'll be at controlling energy waste.
With an infrared heat gun, you just wander around the inside and outside of your house on a hot summer day or a cold winter evening, and take readings at windows, outside doors, walls, or wherever else heat may leak through. The detector helps you get a complete picture of issues with insulation, sealing, or windows in need of replacement.
Professional energy efficiency auditors often use infrared imaging to illustrate where you're gaining or losing heat, but infrared cameras are expensive and an audit can run more than $200. An infrared point-and-shoot thermometer doesn't provide the same pretty printout, but they only cost about $50, so they put this level of detail within reach of the average homeowner.
Most infrared guns come with a beam angle of 1:12, which means that if you point the gun at a wall 12 feet away, then take a reading, you'll get a temperature reading for a one square foot section of the wall. These guns also typically come with a laser beam to show exactly what spot the reading was taken from.
I suggest beginning your infrared thermal audit from the outside. Standing 12 feet back, take a series of readings with your infrared heat gun to figure out what the reference temperature is. You are looking for the coldest temperature in cold weather, or the hottest in hot weather when the AC is running.
Don't take measurements on a sunlit surface, because it can skew your results. Instead, wait for a cloudy period, or for the sun to move.
Note each reading on a sketch of the wall or in note form. Pay extra attention to window temperatures, because windows are big sources of thermal leakage in both hot and cold weather. You may want someone inside to close shades and drapes after your first reading so you can then measure the impact of such window coverings on stopping thermal leakage.
Where readings are considerably worse than your baseline (warmer in cold weather, cooler in summer), take more readings nearby, to find the extent of the thermal leak. You may have missing or settled insulation, cracks or even holes in the wall, or a gap in a window or door.
Next do an indoor thermal audit of the exterior walls, floor, and ceiling of each room. Choose an interior wall as your reference temperature; exterior wall readings should be colder than the baseline in winter, or hotter in summer. Again, you are after thermal leaks on window glass, around windows and doors, through ceiling light fixtures, in cracks in drywall or plaster, or anywhere that is touching an exterior wall. Take close-up readings of any wall outlets or light switches that are near the outside, even if they are on an interior wall.
Check the temperatures of top floor ceilings, as insulation, especially blown in insulation, can get pressed or matted down in leaky attics. For summer readings, do your ceiling readings twice: once in the early morning before the sun has warmed the attic space, and once in the early evening when the attic is hot, so you can determine how much of that heat leaks into your living space.
You will probably find that windows without their window coverings are your biggest heat leaks, as even the most energy efficient windows have a much lower R-value than walls or ceilings. You can either upgrade old windows with more efficient ones, add thermal drapes or blinds, or apply thermal barrier window film to the window pane itself.
You will also probably find drafts in walls, particularly at light fixtures or where wires or pipes exit the home. You want to seal these as much as possible, as drafts can be big energy leaks. Seal around the edges of window frames; use wall outlet foam pads to prevent drafts through the outlets. Your bricks may need tuck pointing, or you may have a more serious problem: settled cellulose insulation between wall studs, in which case the only remedy is to gut the room from within and put in new insulation and drywall. If you have no insulation whatsoever you at least have the option to inject foam insulation, which is a cheaper option.
It makes a lot of sense to do your own mini-audit with your infrared heat detector first, and ask for contractor estimates later. If you have identified your big thermal leaks, you'll be able to ask each contractor what approach they recommend for your situation. Inviting a contractor over and just telling them the house gets too cold in cold weather, or boiling hot in hot weather, means inviting major repairs that might not do any good.
You can use an infrared heat gun for countless other measurements around the house, such as gauging hot water pipe temperature before and after adding pipe wrap; measuring the temperature coming out of forced air registers and going into the air return register, if you have central air conditioning, to gauge air conditioner efficiency; measuring cooking temperatures on your stove; or finding the best spot in your basement for a wine cellar.
Whatever model infrared gun you choose, you are sure to get many hours of use out of it, locating the hotspots and cold spots in your walls, floors and ceilings, your garage, your fridge, freezer, your car engine - anywhere you need to know the surface temperature. You can even use it to measure the temperature of your compost heap - without getting your hands dirty!
Robin Green owns Green-Energy-Efficient-Homes.com, a website that helps people cut their home energy use. For more on doing your own thermal audit, see Infrared heat guns on Green Energy Efficient Homes.
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