Is your home plagued with drafts, cold walls, freezing pipes, ice dams, excessive heating costs, or condensation?

Your residence could be affected by one or more of these common problems:

Stack Effect: Even small gaps in your home’s building envelope can allow significant amounts of heated air to escape (exfiltration). As warm air exits the upper parts of the building, cold outside air is sucked in at lower levels to replace it (infiltration). Family members may complain of drafts, cold spots and other discomforts. The escaping warm, moist air condenses when it contacts colder surfaces in the building envelope, creating moisture build-up inside walls and building materials.

Insulation Problems: Moisture rapidly reduces the insulating power (R-value) of wall and roof insulation, causing large year-round energy losses that can be accurately detected with infrared thermography. Our building envelope inspections also verify the proper installation of insulating materials. If your home has wet, missing, misplaced, or compressed insulation, our certified thermographers will pinpoint and document the problems so you can plan the most cost-effective repairs.

Infrared building envelope analysis is the only proven nondestructive method for troubleshooting these and other heat loss and moisture problems. Home owners use envelope testing to save millions of dollars every year by reducing energy costs, minimizing structural damage, preventing mold, and protecting their families’ health and comfort. An Infra-red Analyzers heat loss survey can help you:

• Reduce heating and cooling costs
• Locate causes of frozen pipes and ice dams, and excessive icicles
• Pinpoint missing, damaged or wet insulation
• Identify sources of air and water infiltration
• Detect conditions likely to support growth of mold and mildew
• Document construction-related heat loss problems
• Boost energy efficiency and reduce your home’s carbon footprint

Heat losses from houses are accelerated by structural problems, poor construction practices, missing or inadequate insulation, moisture infiltration and air leakage. Escaping heat creates a thermal signature that can be detected with infrared thermography. Building envelope analysis uses thermography to pinpoint underlying problems in the structure. From this data we produce a comprehensive report, providing the homeowner with a wealth of detailed information about the locations, causes and extent of problems in the building envelope.

Blower door test reveals extent of building air leakage.

Our Certified Thermographers use cutting-edge infrared detection technology to rapidly and accurately identify hidden problems that waste your energy dollars and threaten the integrity of your home. Typically, data collection can be completed in just one or two days, without disrupting your routine.

Blower Door Testing: With today’s concerns for energy conservation and carbon footprint reduction, determining energy efficiency has become an essential cost-cutting tool for homeowners. Properly installed insulation is one major contributing component to your home’s performance. Air leakage problems, however, are often overlooked. In many cases, excessive air leakage is the biggest factor reducing energy-efficient performance.

A Blower Door is a diagnostic tool that measures the degree of a building’s “air tightness.” Blower Doors provide a reliable, highly accurate and cost-effective method for determining a home’s air leakage performance. Infra-red Analyzers' blower door systems and methodology meet the latest ASTM standard (E779-03). Our blower door testing services provide critical information separately or in combination with our comprehensive infrared building envelope analysis.

By placing the home's interior under a known pressure, a Blower Door test allows the technician to measure how much airflow is required to maintain a certain pressure differential between indoors and outdoors. The number of air changes per hour (the complete replacement of the indoor air volume of the home in one hour) at a standard pressure differential (interior pressure compared to exterior pressure) reveals the building envelope's air leakage profile.