Looking for heat leaks - TOPDON TC001 thermal camera demo 

Tim lad, another good little video. To assist you: 1) The cold skirting is very probably due to the lack of insulation inside the house at the joist level, also timber joist shrinkage where the joists go into the walls are a point cooler air from the cavity can enter so you can see this at top of outside walls. 2) The top corner of outside walls 1st floor is typical of no or reduced level of insulation at the eves. Its an area that has the shortest distance inside to outside (roof) and difficult to insulate particularly after a house is built because its difficult to reach from the loft. 3) Your call on the air vents is correct, the spring loaded / gravity back draft shutters can work well but flap about when its windy. You can buy a bathroom extractor from Senate which incorporates a powered inner shutter closer and that may be worth a look. 4) Your front door side section is prob a section of solid brick / block or an infill stud / gap with little or no insulation.

Tim…reference my comment 2 weeks ago ( I NEED one)……well Ive bought one…luv it. Already shown up a few hidden concerns…Thanks for the video again 👍

We have a thermal camera and have found it to be very useful in our old house. Today, for example, we found that downstairs was rather colder than it should be. A little bit of imagining with the camera exposed some air locks in our antiquated under floor hydronic heating system. Ten minutes of flushing and all back to normal, floors heating up and pipe runs of hot water visible through the flooring and carpets, and the down stairs relatively toasty again. It's really important to not get too carried away with these cameras. Taken too far and we can stuff up every blue image that the camera shows and we end up in an hermetically sealed box. This may be good for the cost of heating but it is not healthy both for air and humidity. This is why trickle vents were invented! Thermal cameras are expensive but they really are useful bits of kit. Personally, I would say that they are great to have and use as and when there are issues (like my example above). Hiring or borrowing one for a few days and stuffing up every hole will affect a step change in heating costs, which is good. In so many ways, having one and incrementally reducing cold spots over a longer period of time, may be a more scientific and, ultimately, a better approach.

Great walk through Tim, I especially like the superimpose feature. I have been thinking of buying one and your video has decided it so thanks. As a thought about the cold spots at the ceiling edges. Some Coving may solve it. I have coving in one bedroom and not in the other which is identical. So will report back when I have had a go with mine when it arrives. This looks like a real boys toy. 😂 It even got SWMBO’s approval.

Well Tim, extremely interesting. I'm tempted. Cheers

Very interesting and informative video.👍(I NEED one of these)

I hired an IR camera from a local firm for a week and it was very illuminating and absolutely addictive. My house (built in the early 1970s) shows similar features to yours, including the cold edges to the upstairs ceilings where they meet the outside walls. I don't think this is an insulation issue, I think it is due to ventilation from the cavity walls and I'm not sure anything can really be done about it. The cold showing on the window frames is probably due to a difference in emissivity between different materials. I bought myself an IR thermometer (looks a bit like a speed gun) after I had to give the camera back and the manual helpfully explains about emissivity. Materials like concrete, stone, brick etc have high emissivity (around 0.95), whereas many metals are much lower, particularly aluminium which is only 0.3. My thermometer has a button to adjust emissivity to compensate for this - your camera may have something similar. My kitchen and cloakroom, both of which have extractor fans, face south west and regularly produce a significant cold draught/wind. The little flaps on the outside simply break off in a gale. I have given up with attempting to stop the draught from outside and simply secure a double thickness of bubble wrap over the fans with an elastic band when they are not in use. I have nearly new (

I found big gaps behind the skirting. Basically the plasterboard is 2.4m in length, my ceilings are probably 2.45m high. Took the skirting off carefully, filled the gap with expanding foam, put them back.

Skirting is usually used to hide gaps where the plasterboard has not meet the finish to floor level, so you may find there is no plasterboard behind parts of your skirting board. also corners can gather pressure making pressure pockets which can slow the rate of air transfer in that area. ( not sure how that will effect heat transfer but it effects smoke)

I purchased one of those last winter, really insightful as to where and what is leaking heat. Our windows are UPVC, a lot less loss than yours, but still noticeable. This reminds me that I must insulate our loft hatch! I also have similar problems with extractor fans so will be interested to hear what you find to address that. IIRC my parents used to have an electrically controlled valve mechanism on the bathroom extractor, but the issue in the kitchen is that the extarctor fan is above the cooker, and it relies on passive louvres outside, which are not great.

Have you done the trick of the warm hand print yet? 👋 Watching swirling water coming to the boil in a pan on your induction hob is mesmerising too 👀! They are very useful for finding gaps in your insulation as you've found out and seeing if your radiators are working properly, measuring delta T on your flow and return on an air to water heat pump. Loads of uses. You can also get a macro lens for them for close up views of PCB components getting hot etc.

Great assessment that just wouldn't be possible without this tool! Aluminium window frames will almost always have a big disadvantage compared to UPVC unfortunately. I was looking closely to see if the heat loss was through the joint between frame and wall but it does look clear that it's the frame itself rather than the joint which will probably be filled with expanding foam, an excellent insulator. At least it looks like for the most part that your windows are consistent which means they're fitted well.

For your external vent covers consider changing to Wind Sound Baffle Vent Cover Draft Excluding type, Blauberg make one that is neat and flush to the wall. Another type is No Resist' Back Draught Grille. Alternatively, leave existing external vents in place and put a cowl over them. You could look at changing the bathroom extractors (assuming all are direct through external wall and not via the loft) to single room heat recovery (SVHR) units, but SVHR units are expensive.

got one off ebay, ill use it and move it on for more I reckon, thanks for the review

Thank you

A vent back draught shutter is what is needed maybe and one with foam tape to seal it and stop the annoying noise of the flaps shutting when it’s windy

The simple three flap outlets we have often get lifted by the wind so can be noisy and not totally effective. Not sure what better solution there is but that's what I found with ours. Your house being on the top of a hill could make you more prone to this too

nice video btw, i have the same one for a while. it was on sale in the summer and i need to use it properly now :), my drafts and cold spots might get solved before next Christmas lol

You always get cold spots in the corners as there isn’t as much are movement so the heat in the air dosnt get to conduit it’s great into the surface as much as it does on the open areas. You could add and additional layer of insulated plasterboard to the dot and dab walls but you loose some interior space. Be careful about some insulation as you need to consider condensation. If you have a lot of humidity and insulate there there is the risk of creating a colder spot behind the insulation and any air leakage into that spot risks the moisture condensing out of the air and creating damp and therefore mould. Remember when you go in the loft make sure you don’t block any eve vents or you could get damp up there. Lofts are meant to be drafty.

Your extractor fan outlet should have little louvres on it which is the one-way valve. You might be able to add a bit of foam to the frame to make the louvres more airtight.

Sorry to say but those doors and windows are shocking. I would get your builders in and get them to discuss if this installation conforms to the insulation regulations they were suppose to. Don't forget that water/moisture also shows up as dark blue. 1) Try sticking a strip of clear car UV/IR window film to the inside of the metal frame to reflect IR energy back into the house. If it works, you can stick some externally in summer. Moreover, you could actually work out the heat loss / gain of all that metal surface area and its impact on your property. 2) I would explore further to see if your builder foam sealed around the frame or if they left an open gap between the frame/brickwork and just covered it up with some trim. Your front door looks to have upvc strip there so peeling that back and looking might reveal something. More professional installations actually use a continuous 40 or 50mm strip of expanding tape that continuously contracts and expands around frames which really seals the frame to the brickwork eg. XPANDA Tape . 3) If all else fails, get a joiner in to make you a nice wooden trim that would get fixed up against the surrounds wherever possible and screwed to the wall to cover up the surface area and act as an insulator. Make a feature of it.

If your skirting board is gloss painted then the reflection blocks the thermal imaging & will show up as cool/cold. Same reason why people wearing glasses looks cold

Hey, great video. I have the same camera and also the same findings like you (new house). I think we cannot do much around windows and corners. But when I saw your ventilation issue, I've turned off the recuperation to see, if I will have the same effect. I would be interested if you can also share your fixes if there will be any.

What's annoying is that frames like that are an expensive 'premium' product because they're slimmer than wood or PVC! You can get thin sheets of PVC covered foam, it's used for signs. It looks like a fiddly job, but I found that even a 6mm layer of foam made a big difference to a tiled window sill in my house. Otherwise, I've used a double-honeycomb thermal blind to limit heat loss through my aluminium framed patio doors, at least at night! (£300 for the blind vs £5,000 for new doors) BTW, I bought the FLIR One camera, but it looks like yours has better detail and refresh rate.

Thanks, interesting. Did you discover any locations that were the result of light shading? Light will ultimately resolve itself as heat.

This is a cool video! I am trying to make something measuring at longer distances, have you tried this cam to measure something at, let's say, 100 m. away?

Looks good, something I would love to try, yet wouldn't want to buy. Good little business opportunity there renting them out 🤔

I'm planning to rent a thermal cam and check for leaks in my garage. Will fix the leaks before I put a heater in it

Would the emissivity differences between the materials e.g. metal window frame and wall, make it look like it is losing heat but actually it's not?

I have one of these too, much better resolution compared to the flir it replaced. Something I don’t think you showed which I found good was being able to add upto 3 bounding boxes and it will show high/low temp in each. Good for focusing on e.g. door frame gaps. Also interesting to see heat of your footprints/fingerprints on surfaces :)

do another quick run round at the weekend when its been 0c overnight, may pull out some new info

You normally have a gap between the plasterboard and the floor to prevent damp being sucked up the wall. @AliDymock has some great videos on adding insulation backed plasterboard around the house

Very interesting. I've wanted one of these for ages. It's a shame no-one's come up with a scientific breakthough to make them cheaper (and not require expensive materials like gallium, indium or whatever). Hopefully one day...

Did you check the solar panels & could you use it to detect faults ?

Of course warm air rises, possibly cold air being drawn in downstairs venting upstairs, the vents are there for a reason, no ventilation means damp walls at the cold spots.

Re the “skirting board?” (American here - we don’t get words)… You said you used to have radiators… could those blue lines be pipes?

A theory. Don't you think the reason you have a colder area between walls/floor, wall/ceiling and small gaps because of the heated air can't reach these places? For example when you mount smoke alarms they should not be close to any edge of the ceiling but instead a bit away from the wall, this is because the smoke(in heated air by the fire) won't reach these places.

I have always fancied one of these Thermal Imaging cameras, but too expensive for me to justify.

Hopefully dabs of plaster rather than mortar - but yes, that’s exactly what those dots are.

use an external flap vent

No thermal camera will show the correct surface temperature of a metal surface, such as the windows. To read the correct temperature you need to temporarily put some tape on there. Thermal photons cannot leave the electron cloud of the metal.

Really need a hire service for these…

Oh dear. Moist air is lighter than dry air, so ceiling vents help to avoid mould spreading throughout the home - even when the fans are off! Try installing a ‘heat economiser’ which will recover some of the heat in the exhausted air and conduct it to warm the incoming air. Tip: steer clear of advice on YT videos by amateurs like yourself. 😉

hey Tim, swapping from EDF to Octopus Intelligent Go, created an account prior seeing your referral link, ie I can apparently still add it now but not sure what to enter, its asking for either your email or personal link to copy? happy to give us both 50 credit 🙂 thx