green home energy – Infrared Point-and-shoot Thermometers: Cut Your Home Energy Use With This Tool And A Few Easy Tips
Infrared Point-and-shoot Thermometers: Cut Your Home Energy Use With This Tool And A Few Easy Tips
An infrared point-and-shoot thermometer can help you get a thorough understanding of where your home is losing heat in cold weather, or gaining it in summer. The more you know about where heat is entering or leaving your house, the more effective you'll be at controlling energy waste.
With an infrared point-and-shoot thermometer, you just move about the inside and outside of your home on a hot summer day or a cold winter evening, and point and shoot at windows, outside doors, walls, and other places where heat may leak through. The device helps you get a detailed picture of problems with insulation, sealing, or windows in need of an upgrade.
Professional energy efficiency inspectors often use infrared imaging to show you where you're gaining or losing heat, but thermal imaging devices are expensive and the audit itself can run over $200. An infrared heat gun doesn't give you the same colorful printout, but they sell for about $50, so they put this detailed information within reach of the average person.
Most infrared heat detectors come with a beam ratio of 1:12, which means that if you point the gun at a wall 12 feet away, then take a reading, you'll get a temperature reading for a one square foot area of the wall. These guns also come with a laser beam so you can see exactly what spot the reading was done from.
I suggest beginning your thermal leak audit from outside. Standing 12 feet back, take a series of readings with your infrared gun to figure out what the reference temperature is. You are looking for the coldest temperature in winter, or the hottest in summer when the AC is on.
Don't take readings on a sunlit wall, because it can mess up your results. Rather, wait for cloud cover, or for the sun to move.
Note each reading on a sketch of the wall or in ordinary notes. Pay particular attention to window temperatures, as these are major sources of thermal loss both in hot and cold weather. You may want an inside helper to close shades and curtains after your first measurement so you can then note the impact of such window coverings on cutting thermal leaks.
Where readings are considerably worse than your baseline (hotter in cold weather, colder in s
1000
ummer), take more measurements close by, to pinpoint the boundaries of the thermal leak. You may have gaps in, or settled insulation, cracks in the wall, or a broken seal in a window or door.
Next do an indoor thermal audit of the outward-facing walls, floor, and ceiling of each room. Choose an interior wall as your baseline; exterior wall readings should be cooler than the baseline in cold weather, or warmer in hot weather. Again, you are after thermal leaks on window glass, around windows and doors, through ceiling light fixtures, in cracks in drywall or plaster, or anywhere that is touching an exterior wall. Take close-up measurements of any wall outlets or light switches that are close to the outside, even if they are on an interior wall.
Take readings of top floor ceilings, as insulation, especially blown in insulation, can get pressed or matted down in leaky attics. For hot weather measurements, do your ceiling readings twice: once early in the morning before the sun has heated the attic space, and again in the early evening when the attic is hot, so you can see how much of that attic heat leaks into your living areas.
You will probably find that windows without their window coverings will be your biggest heat leaks, as even the most efficient windows have a much lower thermal barrier capability than walls or ceilings. You can either upgrade old windows with new efficient ones, add thermal curtains or shades, or apply thermal barrier window film to the window pane itself.
You will also probably find drafts in walls, particularly at light fixtures or where wires or pipes exit the home. You should seal these as best you can, as drafts can be major contributors to home energy costs. Seal around the edges of window frames; use wall outlet insulating foam to prevent air from flowing through the outlets. Your bricks may need tuck pointing, or you may have a more severe problem: settled blown-in insulation between wall studs, in which case the only remedy is to gut the room from within and put in new insulation and drywall. If the walls have no insulation at all you may just be able to inject foam insulation, which costs less than a complete gut and reno.
You should consider doing your own mini-audit with your infrared point-and-shoot thermometer first, and call the contractors later. If you know where your thermal leaks are, you'll be able to ask each contractor what solutions they recommend to your problem. Inviting a contractor over and just telling them the house gets too cold in winter, or too hot in hot weather, means inviting major repairs that may not help at all.
You can use an infrared point-and-shoot thermometer for countless other measurements around the house, such as reading hot water pipe temperature before and after adding pipe wrap; reading the temperature coming out of forced air registers and going into the air return register, if you have central air conditioning, to gauge air conditioner efficiency; measuring frying temperatures on your stove; or finding the best location in your basement for a wine cellar.
Whatever model infrared heat detector you choose, you will doubtless get many hours of use out of it, locating the hotspots and cold spots in your walls, floors and ceilings, your garage, your fridge, freezer, your car engine - anywhere you want to know the surface temperature. You can even use it to measure the temperature of your compost bin - without getting your hands dirty!
By: Robin from Green Energy Efficient Homes
Article Directory: http://www.articledashboard.com
Robin Green runs Green-Energy-Efficient-Homes.com, a website that helps people cut
1000
their home energy use. For more on doing your own thermal assessment, see Infrared heat guns on Green Energy Efficient Homes.
Click the XML Icon Above to Receive Home Improvement Articles Via RSS!
Additional Articles From - Home | Home & Family | Home Improvement
Insulation Grants Remedy Negatives & Side-Effects of DIY Home Insulation
Loft Insulation Grants – What Products Are Supported By Grants?
Is Your Conservatory Too Hot or Too Cold?
Glamorous home made easy with Ceramic Tiles
An energy efficient home is the need of the hour
The Advantages of a Lean to Conservatory
Let Your Kitchen Shine with fabulous Kitchen Tiles
Is Solar Energy For You?
Simple Energy Saving Devices for Home Use
Is It Possible To Build Wind Power Turbines For Your Home?
Ok so 3 more posts today that I've dug up - I'm an information JUNKIE on this stuff lately. Give em a browse and let me know what ya reckon. They're just from a few different sites I've been surfing lately that are generally good for information like this...
The moment is our only guide | Abdi Assadi - Spiritual Healer ...
For example we might get that we need to change our job, home or relationship but no other information. Generally, we need to act on that one piece until the next piece is revealed. This is not some cruel joke or test by our psyche but ...
Cougar Holiday Gift Guide - MORE Magazine
Just when we thought the marketing of cougar-themed products couldn't get any more, um, creative, we stumble upon the Cougar Energy Drink. Contains vitamins, green tea, pomegranate extract and, of course, caffeine, and can be mixed into ...
A Beginners Guide To Recycling At Home
Green Products That Save Energy. P3 International P4480 Kill-A-Watt Electricity Usage Monitor Amazon Deal of the Day: Monitor your electricity usage with the P3 International P4480 Kill-A-Watt Electricity Usage Monitor with ... A Beginners Guide To Recycling At Home. by Michal on November 10, 2009. RecyclingSymbolGreen Everyone can play a part in taking care of the earth. One of the easiest ways to do that is to recycle. You can start right from your own home or ...
Hope you enjoy the read as much as I did and please if you have something to say, use the comments form below to let everyone know your thoughts.
Have a great day!
Mail this post
Tagged with: green home energy • home energy guide
Filed under: General
Like this post? Subscribe to my RSS feed and get loads more!
