# Fun with flir



## nola mike (Dec 16, 2016)

So my seek thermal continues to be geeky fun. With the cold weather it's easy to go outside and find my energy leaks. I have a 100 year old house with storms on most of the original windows. The basement windows are single pane. One window had been partitioned in 2. I moved my dryer and vented it through half of this window. I used 2 layers of plexiglass. The flir confirmed that it does a better job than single pane glass (white is heat, the right side of the window is the glass) . The difference between the storm windows and single pane is similarly pretty dramatic. I also got a nice view of my stove heating the outdoors; exterior chimney, insulated liner, stove partway in the fireplace which was insulated and has a radiant heat shield installed (boo).


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## woodgeek (Dec 18, 2016)

I haven't got a FLIR (yet), but with my IR thermo and some careful measurements I woorked out that my new low-E strorms (+primary single pane) are R-3, while the old storms that were replaced were only R-2.

Fun for the whole geeky family.


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## Dobish (Jan 6, 2017)

i had a friend come over with his flir yesterday, and i was underwhelmed with the results. I was expecting to see a lot more issues that I didn't know about, and it turns out that my house is decently consistent for each room. 

I did find the following:

the window forming ice on the inside is in fact cold
the hole in the wall that goes to outside does in fact make it cold
there is a missing piece of insulation in my bedroom ceiling
the lightswitch that feels really cold is in fact really cold
my stove helps keep things warm


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## Dobish (Jan 9, 2017)

but in all seriousness, I was surprised by what I found. I was expecting a lot worse, and I think that the major factor of how cold parts of my house are is air movement.


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## maple1 (Jan 9, 2017)

Not to deflect a bit, but Flir or Seek? Is one better than the other?

I was interested in these before, but just got a new S7 cell phone, so now starting to check out what I can do with it. Don't even know the possibilities yet - maybe one or both of those isn't an add-on possiblity....


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## laynes69 (Jan 16, 2017)

I couldn't tell you which is better, but the seek had found multiple problem areas for us and others. I recently used it on my buddies home, and wow did he have some major issues with his home. This picture I took last year with my seek, showing my kitchen. door.


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## nola mike (Jan 16, 2017)

maple1 said:


> Not to deflect a bit, but Flir or Seek? Is one better than the other?
> 
> I was interested in these before, but just got a new S7 cell phone, so now starting to check out what I can do with it. Don't even know the possibilities yet - maybe one or both of those isn't an add-on possiblity....


Sorry, I have the seek, but the title wasn't as fun. The FLIR one looks like it has better resolution. Was much pricier and I don't know if it was android compatible when I got mine.


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## DickRussell (Jan 17, 2017)

There is an article in the current issue of Journal of Light Construction on this. Two of the pictures are worth noting. One shows air leakage from a daylighted drainage pipe into a gap between ICF wall and slab. Another shows that a water line feeding radiant heating to a floor above was right behind the sheetrock on which was mounted a thermostat for the lower level, and which never called for heat, making for a cold room there. It's amazing what we can't see, until we have the means to "see" more.


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## maple1 (Jan 17, 2017)

Just ordered a Flir. Now to see how long it takes to get here....


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## Brian26 (Aug 4, 2017)

I think my Flir just paid for itself 10 times over after this recent discovery. My forced air system uses the wall cavities as returns. The bedroom has 2 returns on the lower wall. I shot the wall with the flir and was blown away. I was getting 95-100 degree temps up to by the ceiling. You can see clear as day the attic air getting pulled into the retursn.I put my hand in the return and you could feel the hot moist air getting pulled down the wall cavity from the attic. I cut a hole to discover a wide open gap to my attic at the top of the wall cavity. I also discovered the floor joist was wide open as well. I sealed up both the joist and the gap to the attic and the wall cavity as best I could. I then decided to add another high return for summer AC use in the hole I cut out to help pull the warmer upper air in. They both have dampers so in the winter I can close the top and open the bottom. The temp difference with the ac on after adding the return was huge.


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## georgepds (Aug 6, 2017)

Dobish said:


> i had a friend come over with his flir yesterday, and i was underwhelmed with the results. I was expecting to see a lot more issues that I didn't know about, and it turns out that my house is decently consistent for each room.
> 
> I did find the following:
> 
> ...




The best results I've seen have been with a blower (suction) door in winter. Th suction pulls cold air in through all the little leakd, and shows up as blue streaks on the flir


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