5 Fresh Insights from an Infrared Inspection

This morning Peter Troast, Energy Circle's founder, had an energy audit performed on his family's house (that we're all now referring to as the Energy Circle House).  I stopped by to watch the noted auditor - Flemming Lund of Infrared Diagnostics - work his magic.

Flemming, a certified HERS rater, certified infrared thermographer, and RESNET Green rater, performed a comprehensive whole-house audit, including blower door testing, infrared thermography, computer modeling, financial diagnostics and a smoke stick (no, that's not a cigar).  (By prior agreement, because it had been done previously, he skipped the normal health and safety elements of the audit).

Flemming's particular expertise is in thermography or infrared diagnostics. He uses a $16,000 camera that looks like it is only a generation removed from searching for terrorists in caves, but uses it to inspect the temperatures and innards of walls and ceilings.  His expertise is like that of a veteran Apache tracker aided by the most up-to-date technology available. (My favorite side story of the morning was the escaped gerbil he found hiding in a wall in less than 15 minutes...)

No stranger to the audit process, I had a pretty decent idea of what Flemming would find and where he would find it.   Nonetheless, a house never ceases to surprise.  Here's my Top 5 list of air-leakage culprits that Flemming's infrared camera caught this morning, that caught me flat-footed.

1) The temperature of the various recessed lighting fixtures in the kitchen.  It's no secret that incandescent lights crank out the heat - that is the product of 90% of the energy they consume, after all.  Still, Flemming's camera clocked them in at about 327 degrees, compared to about 105 for the cool-burning LEDs and 165 for the CFLs. That's hot.  And that's right under a small enclosed attic, which must be absolutely scorching.  No wonder this house has had such a problem with ice dams.

2) The concrete foundation/outside walls in the basement. Again, no surprise that concrete has a low R-value compared to, say, insulation.  What surprised me was that the top foot or two of concrete appeared a lot cooler than the rest, which Flemming informs us is because the ground acts as insulation.  Duh. There's a real hit-your-forehead-with-your-palm kind of moment for you.

3) The uninsulated hot water pipe in the kitchen ceiling. Looking at the recessed lights in the kitchen we were all saying, "Yup, that's the ice dam. Right there." Flemming then chimed in modestly, pointing out a long red line in the ceiling: "Well the lights are part of the problem.  But there's also that uninsulated water pipe up there." Invisible, and important.

4) Corners. Corners have a lot of framing, so there's not a lot of room for insulation, and wood is a generally lousy insulator. So they all show up cool in an infrared scan.  What to do about it? Right now, not much. While building, throw a bead of caulk or some closed-cell foam along the seams of the studs to prevent air leakage between them.  Not standard practice in the framing business, but it's those measures that separate a tight, energy efficient home from a, well, standard one.

5) Nails. Standing on one side of the living room, looking through the infrared scanner at the other side (the outside wall), we could see sheetrock nails conducting cold air from the studs into the room.  Small? Yes. Inevitable? Probably. Cool that an IR camera has this amount of precision? Oh so cool.