Thermal Infrared Images showing outside (unconditioned) air entering Utah homes.
The photos were taken with the calibrated blower door in operation. The BLUE is actual cold air entering around doors, windows, walls, floors, ceilings, skylights and especially can lights in ceilings.

 

Air leaking at wall | floor joints	Air leaking around front doors	Air leaks around new windows	Air leaks at wall | ceiling joints
Huge air leaks at ceiling can lights	Large air leaks around skylights	Air leaks at newly installed windows	Air leaks at outlets on exterios walls
Excessive air coming in at exterior all	Air leak at poorly installed back door	Massive air leaks at remodeled addition	Massive air leaks at remodeled addition
Log cabin ceiling/wall leaks	Log cabin ceiling/wall leaks	Log cabin ceiling/wall leaks	Log cabin ceiling/wall leaks
Blower door in operation - Jackson Hole	Blower door in operation - Park City	Inside view of blower door	Exterior of blower door
Tempest VSX high volume blower	Tempest high volume blower door	Super volume Tempest blower	Super volume Tempest blower

 

Preparing for an Energy Audit

Before the energy auditor visits your property, make a list of any existing problems such as condensation and uncomfortable or drafty rooms. The auditor first examines the outside of the building to determine the size of the property and its features (i.e., wall area, number and size of windows).

Selecting an Energy Auditor in Utah

Before contracting with an energy auditing company, you should take the following steps:

• Make sure the energy auditor uses a calibrated blower door.
• Make sure they do thermographic inspections or contact another company to conduct one.

Blower Door Tests

Professional energy auditors use blower door tests to help determine a building's airtightness.

These are some reasons for establishing the proper building tightness:

• Reducing energy consumption due to air leakage
• Avoiding moisture condensation problems
• Avoiding uncomfortable drafts caused by cold air leaking in from the outdoors
• Making sure that the building's air quality is not too contaminated by indoor air pollution.

How They Work

A blower door is a powerful fan that mounts into the frame of an exterior door. The fan pulls air out of the house, lowering the air pressure inside. The higher outside air pressure then flows in through all unsealed cracks and openings. We use infrared cameras to check for energy loss. These tests determine the air infiltration rate of a building. Some people also call these - inferred or infared cameras. Technically they are referred to as inferred cameras that are used for thermographic inspections and thermal imaging energy audits. IR cameras produce images that have many advantages over any other type of equipment for energy audits. Over the years we have found that a high volume blower door and a high resolution thermal imaging will produce the finest quality thermographic images. The FLIR camera has proven to be the best camera for home inspection photo graphs.

Blower doors consist of a frame and flexible panel that fit in a doorway, a variable-speed fan, a pressure gauge to measure the pressure differences inside and outside the home, and an airflow manometer and hoses for measuring airflow.

There are two types of blower doors: calibrated and uncalibrated. It is important that auditors use a calibrated door. This type of blower door has several gauges that measure the amount of air pulled out of the house by the fan. Uncalibrated blower doors can only locate leaks in homes. They provide no method for determining the overall tightness of a building. The calibrated blower door's data allow the auditor to quantify the amount of air leakage and the effectiveness of any air-sealing job.

Preparing for a Blower Door Test

Take the following steps to prepare your home for a blower door test:

• Close windows and open interior doors
• Turn down the thermostats on heaters and water heaters
• Cover ashes in wood stoves and fireplaces with damp newspapers
• Shut fireplace dampers, fireplace doors, and wood stove air intakes.

Thermographic Inspections

Energy auditors may use thermography-or infrared scanning-to detect thermal defects and air leakage in building envelopes.

How They Work

Thermography measures surface temperatures by using infrared video and still cameras. These tools see light that is in the heat spectrum. Images on the video or film record the temperature variations of the building's skin, ranging from white for warm regions to black for cooler areas. The resulting images help the auditor determine whether insulation is needed. They also serve as a quality control tool, to ensure that insulation has been installed correctly.

A thermographic inspection is either an interior or exterior survey. The energy auditor decides which method would give the best results under certain weather conditions. Interior scans are more common, because warm air escaping from a building does not always move through the walls in a straight line. Heat loss detected in one area of the outside wall might originate at some other location on the inside of the wall. Also, it is harder to detect temperature differences on the outside surface of the building during windy weather. Because of this difficulty, interior surveys are generally more accurate because they benefit from reduced air movement.

Thermographic scans are also commonly used with a blower door test running. The blower door helps exaggerate air leaking through defects in the building shell. Such air leaks appear as blue or red streaks in the infrared camera's viewfinder.

Thermography uses specially designed infrared video or still cameras to make images (called thermograms) that show surface heat variations. This technology has a number of applications. Thermograms of electrical systems can detect abnormally hot electrical connections or components. Thermograms of mechanical systems can detect the heat created by excessive friction. Energy auditors use thermography as a tool to help detect heat losses and air leakage in building envelopes.

Infrared scanning allows energy auditors to check the effectiveness of insulation in a building's construction. The resulting thermograms help auditors determine whether a building needs insulation and where in the building it should go. Because wet insulation conducts heat faster than dry insulation, thermographic scans of roofs can often detect roof leaks.

In addition to using thermography during an energy audit, you should have a scan done before purchasing a house; even new houses can have defects in their thermal envelopes. You may wish to include a clause in the contract requiring a thermographic scan of the house. A thermographic scan performed by a certified technician is usually accurate enough to use as documentation in court proceedings.