Michael Holigan: Are your utility bills just a little too high? You know you have a leak somewhere but don't know where to find it? Tim Slattery does. Tim's with us from TSA Consultants. Good to have you here Tim. Hey, what have you got in front of us here?
Tim Slattery: Well, what we've got is a sophisticated thermal imager produced by Infometrics and what I'm going to use it for is to find the hot spots on the exterior portions of the house that will help us identify where there's heat coming out from the inside.
M.H.: Okay. Let's take a look.
T.S.: What you've got right now is you've just got a general scan of the house and it looks like daylight here.
M.H.: Ah-huh. Black and white.
T.S.: Black and white. It's a black and white scan and what it's going to do is it's going to depict the hot spots, or the failures within the different portions of the house.
M.H.: Real obvious. Now it looks like we have lights on on different parts of the house.
T.S.: Exactly.
M.H.: But it's no lights, it's actual heat.
T.S.: Actually what you're seeing is your seeing where the heat is migrating out from the interior portion of the house.
M.H.: Well, I understand the windows. A lot of times you have leaks around the windows and their aluminum frames, so their hot. What's this along the eaves?
T.S.: Well, what you've got is, heat rises, overtakes the attic, and consequently, with the pressure build up, instead of pressure build up it's going to be forced out through any vulnerable areas within the structure of the roof.
M.H.: Okay. Well, how about the brick here? Why in the world would it be hot there?
T.S.: Well, typically in a situation like this, it would be my guess that, with the age of the house, that maybe the insulation, the batten insulation, has slid down inside the wall, which is typical.
M.H.: Yeah, being fiberglass and a twelve year old home.
T.S.: And it could have slid down, or maybe it was never installed.
M.H.: Yeah. So there it is in color. What should we be worried about, what colors?
T.S. Be anything from about the middle or almost to the middle where the green is up to the yellow.
M.H.: Okay.
T.S.: To me, that's a strong indication that we've got some problem areas.
M.H.: Need to get it fixed.
T.S.: And that's where I would look.
M.H.: Okay.
T.S.: That's where I would start looking, is in those areas.
M.H.: All right.
T.S.: You can see around the door, the windows, obviously, up above the door, along the eaves and the brick area next to the window, obviously the window.
M.H.: Definitely a problem there. Right below the window.
T.S.: We've got some problems right below the window. Now what this is telling me is there's a big chance that there may be a sink below this window where there's a hot water pipe, or there may be a heater, or garbage disposal that's working.
M.H.: You're right. That is the sink area, and it does have a garbage disposal and a dishwasher right next to it.
T.S.: May be dishwasher's running right now.
M.H.: All right.
T.S.: So this gives you an idea of how sensitive this camera is.
M.H.: So that's amazing we're losing that much heat though, up higher, next to the window there. We definitely have a problem.
T.S.: Yeah. There was probably, once again, maybe there's no insulation there.
M.H.: Yeah. How about the roof itself? Are there any bad spots on the roof?
T.S.: Let's take a look. Now what you're seeing here is you're seeing some problems, or you're seeing not necessarily problems, but some heat migration along this valley over on the right side. You've got some up along the, obviously the ridge of the roof, which is where the heat is going to try to exit.
M.H.: Tim, it's obvious we do have a problem right here, even from the inside.
T.S.: The spot that you're seeing right here is telling me that the insulation in that area has failed. And after further investigation, looking up at the roof, I can see it's leaked. So what's happened is the water's had an effect on the insulation, from a roof leak. The insulation's no longer serving it's purpose, consequently you've got heat migrating out in that area.
M.H.: Yeah. May have got wet and heavy and just sagged, may be laying on the floor up there.
T.S.: Exactly. Good example.
M.H.: How about over here at the wall, where we saw the hot brick from outside? What does it show us here?
T.S.: Well, without opening the wall, Mike, what I would guess is, you can see the partitions, and in-between the partitions in this particular portion of the frame, it's dark. Which tells me there's insulation here, but when you scan over where we saw that hot spot on the outside of the brick wall, it looks like where they had this little two foot piece put in, they didn't insulate it. And I'm seeing that because of the color difference.
M.H.: You can see the studs on both sides, like you said, because you can see the nails holding the sheetrock on.
T.S.: You can see the studs here and the studs here and then you've got the big span. And if we matched up these two pictures, bingo, there it is.
M.H.: Sensitive equipment.
T.S.: Very.
For more information contact Tim Slattery @ TSA Consultants 972-713-8710 or Mary Dwyer Fallon @ Inframetrics, Inc. 16 Esquire Rd. N. Nillerica, MA 01862-2598, 508-670-5555 EXT. 225 email: mfallon%infra@mcimail.com
Episode 44 1996 - 97 Season
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