Thermal imaging to detect heat loss in house

dominoman

I live in a 100 year old, single brick, single glazed house with no insulation. Heating it costs a lot and as soon as the heating goes off it cools very quickly because of all the draughts.

So far I've done the easy things. Draught strip around front door. Polystyrene insulation under the floor. Loft insulation.

I was thinking of borrowing a infrared camera, or getting a heat survey done, to tell me where else I can make small low-cost changes that will have the most effect.

Has anyone used an infrared camera for this? Or had a heat loss survey? Did it help?

System

tbh it might not be the most useful thing in your situation as there is probably too many areas where heat is escaping - in a building with reasonable insulation levels you can usually find a few cold spots but where you have literally no insulation you are going to see everything as cold!

peachyprice

They have an infrared temperature probe in Lidl this week £14.99

"shows heat loss on windows, doors or insulation as well as quickly and reliably locating thermal leaks and cold bridges"

HTH

[Deleted User]

Double glazing film for the windows costs peanuts.

MisterBaxter

A FLIR survey on a house of that construction that hasn't had any insulation upgrade as such is just likely to show a mass of white and red and not really be that useful. You could probably quite accurately predict where the heat loss will be, windows will be glowing white, if you have maxed out the loft insulation that should be OK, the doors are likely to have a high level of loss and the walls are going to be transmitting a lot of heat. I would only have a thermal imaging survey done once I had addressed all of the obvious stuff as it will pick out the last few areas.

Improved glazing, thick curtains, insulated doors, insulated walls, heat recovery extract fans. If you have a chimney that you aren't using there will be heat loss through that.

I would save your money, don't bother with the heat survey and instead spend on actual improvements.

Smiley_Dan

Yes, I have done this. I highly recommend you do it yourself - hire of a camera will be about half the cost of getting someone to do it, and while there are some things to learn it's well within the proficiency of someone with half a brain.

It's an extremely valuable exercise. Because of lax building standards in the UK, thermal bridges and air infiltration is often left as a matter of course. You might spot where eaves are poorly treated, where dot and dab plasterboard has been installed, issues around window frames, loft hatch problems, recessed lighting air ingress and lack of insulation... loads of stuff.

In short it's a very valuable thing to do, because houses are more complicated than ticking boxes ("loft insulation", tick, "solid wall insulation", tick... -> that approach doesn't work!)

You can hire the cameras, some councils allow free hire. You can also buy them much cheaper now and they plug into your smartphone, e.g. FLIR ONE and Seek Thermal (they aren't the best quality but may be good enough).

I recommend getting a camera with a wide field of view.

dominoman

Thanks for all the good advice.

I think at this point I should do more insulating first before looking into a heat survey or even the Lidl infrared thermometer.

I'm going to set aside a weekend and blitz as much as I can:

- Insulate under floors using polystyrene boards
- Shave or sand doors that don’t close properly (back door, loft door, ensuite door etc)
- Insulate loft where is missing
- Insulate windows and doors that let in air (use candle to show draughts)
- Add window film or stick on magnetic windows.
- Block up the unused chimneys

Any other ideas of what I should look at?

Smiley_Dan

Unless there are obvious wins, I'd do the survey first. It's always better to measure, improve, measure again.

It'll take a lot more than a weekend to do that lot!

Recessed downlighters. Any plasterboarding on bare block? Service penetrations. Loads and loads and loads of stuff you can do.

This is a good overview: http://www.greensuffolk.org/assets/Greenest-County/SGBN/Sustainable-Construction/refurbfinalpdf.pdf

Edit: I suppose I am assuming you'd buy an IR camera at the lower cost these days (these things used to cost thousands). If the cost of hire is high, I see why you'd address some items first.

System

Smiley_Dan wrote: »

Unless there are obvious wins, I'd do the survey first. It's always better to measure, improve, measure again.

It'll take a lot more than a weekend to do that lot!

Recessed downlighters. Any plasterboarding on bare block? Service penetrations. Loads and loads and loads of stuff you can do.

This is a good overview: http://www.greensuffolk.org/assets/Greenest-County/SGBN/Sustainable-Construction/refurbfinalpdf.pdf

I can only assume that you haven't tried to use a thermal imaging camera on an uninsulated, single glazed house before - surveys are only useful when you are looking to identify a problem, but we already know that there's heat escaping all over this place.

zax47

the_r_sole wrote: »

I can only assume that you haven't tried to use a thermal imaging camera on an uninsulated, single glazed house before - surveys are only useful when you are looking to identify a problem, but we already know that there's heat escaping all over this place.

Indeed - it's like looking at a sieve and wondering where the leaks are - EVERYWHERE!

Single skin, single glazed? Well double glazing would help, a bit, but the single skin is just not efficient from a thermal perspective without a hell of a lot of work & cost. Move house??

Norman_Castle

Look for draughts where pipes go through the floor and walls. The worst I've found are from behind kitchen cupboards and bath panel.
Sealing between wooden floors and skirting can also make a big difference.