With the Real Estate market getting a little soft these days, its not a great time to sell a house. As a result, many homeowners are choosing to wait it out and are doing repairs and upgrades to their existing homes.
Energy costs are going up and with winter coming on, heating bills could be a challenge. How can you get ahead of the curve on this issue?
One answer is getting a Weatherization survey to see where you can better seal and insulate your house to prevent heat loss and infiltration.
There is a new tool for this. Its called Infrared Thermography.
This done with a special cameras that see in the infrared spectrum only. Visible light is not a consideration. In effect, it sees heat. Given the right conditions, the Thermographer can locate moisture leaks, air infiltration, missing insulation, duct leaks, breaks or blockage in radiant heating systems in floors or ceilings and many other conditions that are costing you money.
The existence of the infrared wavelength of radiation was discovered by Sir William Herschell, an astronomer, in 1800 while searching for a new optical material. It lies just beyond the red area of visible light in the radiation spectrum and manifests itself as heat. Normal window glass blocks the transmittance of infrared light. This is what causes the green house effect. Visible light passes through glass, gets converted to infrared when it strikes an object and then is trapped in the structure because that infrared cannot pass back through the glass. Im sure you have seen the depiction of a beam of sunlight split into a rainbow by a prism.
There has been a huge improvement in the equipment and techniques over the last 200 or so years. Many of these have been funded by the Government as part of military research.
The early cameras were very complex and heavy. They required liquid nitrogen to cool the detector, weighed in excess of 200 pounds and cost a small fortune. Because of this, their adoption by civilian industry was limited. Now, due to advances in detector technology and micro electronics, cameras weigh only 2 to 5 pounds and are affordable by small business. New cameras run from $7000 to over $100,000. Not a insignificant amount but much better than before. These price reductions and ease of use have made it possible for a small business owners as well as industrial and utility companies to own their own cameras.
Many manufacturing companies and utilities have Thermographers on staff, full time. Their role is Non-Destructive Testing and Predictive Maintenance. It is much cheaper to find and repair faults in mechanical and electrical equipment before they fail than waiting for failure that can completely shut down a facility, throwing many people out of work, costing millions of dollars and possibly saving lives.
The average cost savings is considered to be at 20:1. That is for every dollar spent on thermography, 20 dollars are saved. Pretty smart idea, right?
You too can take advantage of this concept right in your home or business.
My company, True Professionals, Inc., has a subsidiary called Thermal-Diagnostics.com that does these types of inspections in the Los Angeles area. Check the internet or your local phone book for someone in your area.
By getting a weatherization survey you can find and correct problems in your home that are costing you money.
Do you have a drafty house with leaky windows? A few dollars of caulk, applied in the right places (as determined by the survey) can save you big money on heating and cooling bills.
Does your heating system seem to always be running? This could be those leaky windows or possibly a leaky or disconnected heating duct somewhere. More dollars spent trying to keep up with infiltration or for heating the attic or crawl space.
Got a persistent roof leak that the roofer just cant pin down. Maybe a trained thermographer can, thereby saving the cost of a complete re-roof!
Do you suspect that there may be mold in the walls? A trained thermographer can detect moisture intrusion when there are no visible signs. Avoid tearing open walls to find that the problem lies elsewhere.
Soyou can see where Im going with this. STOP wasting money, get an Infrared Weatherization survey done soon. You will be glad you did!
Disclaimer: All information on this site is provided for informational purposes only! By no means is any
information presented herein intended to substitute for the advice provided to you by any health care or other professional
or organization.
