Our home is expensive to heat. Not only is that, but it feels drafty. We were convinced that our main heating problems were the Windows in our family room (where the thermostat is) – all were replaced without any effect.
Annoyed, we needed to find a way to pinpoint our homes problems. We turned to Thermal Imaging by Northwest Infrared to help us understand the problems. I am very impressed and highly recommend their service. I believe this is the single best thing that can be done to your home. It is inexpensive and pinpoints phantom energy loss. Northwest Infrared only does energy evaluation – you’ll get brutally honest information without the sales pitch.
Thermal analysis is a two step process:
- Depressurize the home taking accurate barometric measurements to determine how much leakage there is.
- Use a thermal imager to see where cold air is leaking into the home.
Common Problems
Pipe cutouts are huge openings to the crawl space:
Downdraft vent in the cooktop isn’t sealed or baffled:
Return air vent uses the floor joists instead of being ducted – drawing lots of air from the ‘area between floors’
– And in our case those floor joists are open to the outside!
Our Unique Problems
Our new windows weren’t sealed correctly (you can bet we’ll be bringing that up with Anderson Renewable):
Our vents aren’t sealed correctly:
Our worst offender is our heating room which is open to the crawl space. This room is essentially outside, but not insulated like it is an inside closet:
Just a dog
Video
I took some video during the process:
badass! cool pix.
[…] friend Lou Amadio up in Seattle decided to really find out if his home was efficient, and if not then where the problems were. He turned to a really AWESOME solution: a thermal imaging […]
Thanks to Karl Weinberg for the referral. Brent Foster at Northwest Infrared is on my list, he’s a must have!
Impressive video, I’m so glad that it worked out 🙂
Nice Pictures – http://www.infraredthermalimaging.net
You should consider having a thermal imaging analysis done on your home – pinpoints ‘phantom energy loss’ – https://ooeygui.com/?p=232
They offer an amazing service! What a good idea.