Thermal Image examples

[Swwils]

Anyone want to go through some thermals? I can't find any good resources online for typical examples you can see.

[Oldgreybeard]

I have some fairly rubbish thermal images from 2015, just after completing this house, but the thermal imaging camera I used was not great and did not have active cooling. Still, these two images of our living room window, one from inside and one from outside, do indicate reasonably well how I managed to reduce the heat loss through the windows a fair bit (the black bits are just privacy, the camera recorded the exact lat and long when taking the images). Also the date format is US, so month/day/year (these were taken on a cold February morning, before the sun got around to the east of the house):

First one from inside, when it was just above zero outside:

Living room window inside 2015.jpg (26.7 KiB) Viewed 1946 times

This one is the same window, taken from outside:

Living room window outside 2015.jpg (31.41 KiB) Viewed 1946 times

Note that the window frames, that are around 120mm thick (timber - foam - powder coated aluminium) are the most significant thermal bridges, the 52mm thick triple glazing is a fair bit better than the frames. The walls have 300mm of insulation, so are massively better insulators than the windows or the frames. These are PassivHaus certified windows, so pretty much the best you can get.

The camera used has an inherent gradient problem, too, the bottom of the image always shows a higher apparent temperature than the top, due to a design issue where the internal electronics heat the lower part of the bolometer more than the top,

[AE-NMidlands]

I suppose the difference between 1 and 4 isn't at all bad, you can't expect everything to be perfect!

[Oldgreybeard]

I suppose the difference between 1 and 4 isn't at all bad, you can't expect everything to be perfect!

True, but it's one of those little things that are annoying when striving to get heat losses down to the lowest possible level! I had to keep reminding myself throughout the whole build that perfection is the enemy of good. Not at all easy when I've spent my life measuring things and trying to eke out a little more performance.

[Swwils]

I think in this one you can see air comming through downlight that's not flush. Also I can see the individual screws above and dabs on the wall, it's a metal framed ceiling under a balcony.

Don't know what's going on in the corner of this ceiling.

[Oldgreybeard]

Looks like a classic geometric thermal bridge in the corner, not at all unusual even in a really good house. The geometry of corners means there are three heat flow paths right at the very corner, rather than just one in the centre of a wall.

Probably also some thermal bridging to the right upper edge, adding to the apparent effect, might just be insulation not tucked in tight at the edge, perhaps?

[Swwils]

Suspect you are right, but the insulation there should be at high level so I guess they have laid it low level and it's uneven.



I think the thresholds have been left empty here.

[Oldgreybeard]

I think you're right. looks like no insulation at all in places. Not that unusual, I'm sorry to say, the need for insulation to be contiguous to be effective hasn't really got through to many construction companies, and compliance with building regulations is a bit of a joke, as the big boys just pay for completion certificates with little or no proper inspections during the build.

Annoyed the hell out of me, as I had a total of 7 building control inspections during our self-build, 3 of them from a nit picking bloke that went on and on about the water flow rate from taps and the shower needing to be restricted to comply with water saving measures (despite us not having mains water, so that part of the regs not applying to our build) and a big development about ten miles down the road having bathrooms with massive sunflower shower heads that in no way complied with the flow rate limit in the regs.

There seems to be an out of sight, out of mind, approach to insulation in new builds. The vast majority are never inspected by any building control body (because of the sampling rule) so they can get away with stunts like this.

Sorry if this sounds like a rant. It's been a sore point with me for a decade, and still makes me angry now - no offence intended.