"Human Eye Can't See it, Thermal - Infrared Camera Can!"
"Thermal imaging can discover hidden leaks and mold signs that can not be seen with a naked eye. Thermal - Infrared camera makes any signs of energy waiste or leakage clearly apparent during an infrared inspection."
Infrared Thermal Camera Inspection.
The art of "how to find a leak" without putting any holes in your wall is simple when you know how. Zoom Home Inspection uses cutting edge thermal infrared imaging technology - fast and reliable way to find leaks.
During the Home Inspection we use an infrared camera that makes an invisible heat radiation visible on the screen of the camera. Every object radiates heat in an invisible infrared spectrum: human body heat, electrical wiring, heat radiators. Leakage is simply a water accumulating in the wall, ceiling or floor. As you know wet materials accumulate heat worse than dry ones, just like wet shoes would keep you cold. As a result, differences in temprature make leaks visible to the infrared thermal camera.
Got Window leak?
Leakage can come in a variety of forms: leaking window, floor leak, wall moisture, leak behind wall, leak in skylight, gutter leak, shower leak and deck leak. Click Here to find out more about leakage types.
Roof leakage could be an indicator of a costly repair along the way. But the greatest danger of wet walls is mold that can spread around the house and cause irreversible health damage.
Also thermal imaging can prevent fire and save on hydro bills! An inexperienced contractor might decide to overlook professional electrical installation and hook up the electrical cables himself. Poor wiring will cause electrical cables to overheat, and as a result, energy would be wasted and might cause a fire. Thermal anomaly in switch boards and cables can be quickly and easily detected without expensive and time consuming electrical surveys.
Switchboard Cables that glow in red are overheating and are fire hazard
Do You Suspect Moisture Behind Your Wall?
Do you wonder how the moisture is getting into you walls in the first place?
There are multiple reasons why moisture and leaks will find there way into your house walls, but for the purpose of this webpage we will just discuss water entry through cracks in the exterior cladding.
During a home inspection using thermal imaging, our inspector detected signs of moisture and a leaks on the interior side of a north facing wall next to a window. You can see in the righthand photo below there is also a crack in the cladding in the exact same area. (Keep reading underneath the photo)
After detecting the moisture behind the wall on the inside, the thermographer then went outside with the thermal imaging camera to see if the water was also running down between the paint and plaster finish. You can see in the lefthand infrared image above the dark red colour indicating a ‘thermal anomaly’.
This dark read area is moisture behind the paintwork that has heated up in the sun at a different rate to the paint around it, as seen through the infrared camera.
How to you test the moisture content behind the wall?
Well you need to know the leak is there first. In this photo above, the leak may have gone undetected if it wasn’t for the infrared camera, because you couldn’t even see it with the human eye. In addition, the leak may have originated from above the window!
Have you noticed signs of a leak on your ceilings inside your home?
How about a slight change of color on the paintwork?
Leaks coming through your ceiling can sometimes be tricky to find depending on what’s directly above. In some cases the leak is coming through a light (traveling along wires), or coming through in the middle of the ceiling and other times around the edges and top of walls.
The infrared photo below was a result of a leaking deck. The home owner new this leak was there, but needed to know if it was tracking in from the side of the deck, or if it was isolated to one area above. In this particluar case there was deck drainage directly above the area, and it turned out to be a plumbing issue.
Here’s what water coming through the roof looks like using infrared. 
Finding a leak using Zoom Home and Mold Inspection could be the fast way!
Do you suspect a leak coming in through your skylight?
Where is the leak source?
Skylights can be more hassle than they are worth if not fitted correctly. Due to the vast amounts of water flowing across your roof, skylights are very vulnerable to the elements if the flashing isn’t fitted correctly, or the roofer has used "sub-grad" silicon to seal any potential water penetration points.
Ontop of that, you have joinery failures to contend with.
Like the majority of leaks, you don’t usually SEE them until after they have penetrated through the ceiling and damaged to your plaster board/drywall etc (Costs more money to fix also).
A recent thermal imaging leak inspection scan revealed a leak around a sky light that the home owner did not know was there. Fortunately they won’t need to do an invasive inspection or cause damage to the wall because it was found early. The skylight joinery was not sealed correctly in this case. A thermal imaging camera can detect leaks fast.
Here’s what this particular leak look like through the infrared camera:
See the dark patch in the corner? That’s a leak that couldn’t be seen with the human eye!
A regular thermal imaging leak scan is an excellent way to stay ontop of your properties condition, as there is no damage caused during the inspection at all in fact, it can be done without even touching the walls!
Have you got a plumbing leak that you can’t find?
Can you see a leak that could be a result of a burst water pipe?
In the image below, you can see an infrared photo that was taken in a toilet. The home owner called the thermal imaging specialist because they could see water starting to penetrate through at the bottom of the toilet wall. Doing a visual inspection (without damaging the wall) simply couldn’t determine where the leak was coming in from.
So was the leak caused by plumbing problems behind the toilet, or potentially coming from around the window above? 
It turned out to be neither of the above suspected areas. The leak detection expert traced the source of the leak to the bathroom next door (the bath tub backed onto the toilet wall). In this image you can see the leak higher up the wall towards the corner, further confirming the findings.
If you aren’t sure if your plumbing is leaking or not, then a thermal imaging inspection could solve your problem very quickly!
Do you have water leak appearing on your carpet or floor?
Not sure where the leak is coming from?
There have been several occasions during thermal imaging home inspections, where the owner calls because they can see water on their carpet, or somewhere on the floor where it shouldn’t be. In a recent inspection for client, the thermal imaging inspector was actually called out to the property to help find a different leak and while inspecting the building came across a leak on the carpet that no one knew was there! (See image).
Of course it didn’t help that the carpet was a dark color (that’s why the human eye couldn’t see it), but the thermal camera picked it up in an instant. You can see in the infrared image that the leak was around the edge of the floor up against the skirting board, therefore leading the inspector to believe is was tracking is from outside somewhere.
It’s never easy to find a leak that appears on the floor, but in this case the leak was coming from a pylon outside the area and finding its way in through perished grout between exterior tiles.
If you can see signs of a leak at the bottom of your wall, and there is only a roof above you could have a gutter leak.
During a infrared home inspection recently, a huge leak appeared on the IR camera that sent the home owner into shock! This leak appeared to have been there for some time and the moisture readings were really high also. Unfortunately there was untreated timber behind the walls (untreated timber can rot real fast).
The scariest part of buying a home is that you have absolutely no idea of what could be happening behind the walls, no matter how ‘neat and tidy’ the home looks. Having a thermal imaging inspector run an infrared camera over the interior of the home can save you from buying a home half full of water.
The good thing about finding leaks prior to buying the house is the negotiation power it gives you. Put it this way, the fee you pay the thermographer is alot less then what you could negotiate off the property price if home inspector finds an issue! Not to mention the piece of mind it will give you.
Here’s the infrared image of what the gutter leak we detected looks like. 
The dark area in this image is a leaking gutter. The source of the leak was easy to pinpoint with this image. Now that you know about infrared imaging, would you risk buying a home without it?
Do you need a thermographic survey of your electrical switchboards?
A thermal imaging inspection will instantly highlight any ’hot spots’ for you.
Regardless if you have only one switchboard, or 1000 switchboards throughout your company, if any of them are under load they are vulnerable to lose connections, arcing and have the potential to cause fire and shutdowns! There isn’t a company out there that can “afford” to have a fire, production shuts down, cash flow shuts down and clients will vanish to another supplier if your company can’t deliver.
A thermal imaging infrared survey could help you to avoid this situation in fact, a lot of insurance companies are now requiring annual thermo graphic surveys of electrical systems and switchboards prior to issuing policies.
 This image shows a clear fuse temperature difference that was not possible to see with the human eye!
Most electricians are good at what they do, but no matter how long they’ve been in the business, they still won’t see electrical faults as quick as an infrared camera!
Most thermal imaging cameras will read heat variation being radiated off an object down to .10 of a degree, so what this means to you and your company, is if you have a switchboard with 500 wires running in different directions, the thermal camera will INSTANTLY see which wires are potentially hot and/or faulty. Even new switchboards can have faults.
If you haven’t had a thermographic infrared survey of your electical systems in the past, then now is the time.
In Canada, the average payback for companies conducting regular thermal inspections on their electrical systems is 4:1.
  
We use Industry leading equpment and provide you with third party unbiased oppinion: we are not affiliated with any mold removal or construction company.
Book an Inspection with an Infrared camera call us today! |
