Thermal imaging

[Eco Deal]

Are customers intrested in thermal imageing to find hotspots with in the property ???

 

[grantr37]

I was thinking about this myself on and off for about the past 5 years, it tends to be industrial customers and building standards signing off on a fit for purpose certificate that are bothered with this, for example for a new office building the ventilation /air conditioning boys will do airflow rate tests on all of the ceiling vents and air conditioner units with a tent tester (like an upside down umbrella with an airflow meter ) that they put over the vents, they will then smoke test doors and windows, stick probes into plant room vent ducts and a whole manner of other air ducts and will do a thermal image check (with a photograph overlay) on the plumbing, heating, ventilation ducts and the outside walls of the building that they will provide along with a written report and summing up to the building standards.... I have worked with a thermal imager once to check electrical plant that was getting set up in a fancy data center......I would only use one myself (if I could afford to buy one) to examine motors and transformers etc for defects...
your average householder will just not be interested and would only want that kind of thing if it was a legal requirement in selling a house or something...and would then expect it for free as they would take issue in a big way with paying for what they would see as simply "snapping a different colour photo"...
I am looking at a paper catalogue right here in front of me from a well known yellow coloured brand of instrument manufacturer....the thermal imager I am seeing here is £23,222.00 which is the kind of money that only a large hvac outfit could afford....and then only for one unit which would need to be kept inside a big safe....:26:

 

[mattmoo1974]

Post on a cannabis forum

 

[UNG]

Would be a nice tool for doing condition reports on installations or finding potential faults. The downside is the high cost and how long it would take to recoup

As to whether customers would pay for this type of survey or report is anyone's guess in the current economic climate

 

[Engineer54]

Worth there weight in Gold in the right situations. Use in a domestic installation, err, i don't think so, ...useful yes, cost effective, ...definitely NO!!

 

[jay sean]

I work for a national company, we do thermal images for most of the companies we do PIRs for for, some companies we do a yearly thermal images of the dbs,

I think it is written into most contracts that thermal images have to be done as you can find hot spots, loose connections etc etc.

There is about 20 guys in our team and most of us have fluke thermal image cameras, I was told they are about 2.5k each

 

[Sparky Ninja]

Thermal Imaging is a very useful tool, but obviously shouldn't be used as a substitute to essential inspection and testing.
It's also a very complex task to understand carrying out thermal imaging effectively (emissivity, reflectance, blackbodies etc).

The gear is damn expensive, but this time of year, very fun to play with.

 

[Former Sponsor TM]

I deal with thermography and thermal imaging camera's quite a bit as part of working for supplier of test equipment. It is true that you can almost spend as much as you like on a thermal camera as they range up to £30K in price (and that's just what is available to the public market). I think the real question is to look at your application and then determine what is needed. For a domestic electrical installer who wants to use thermography as a fault finding tool to detect electrical hot spots, a basic thermal imaging camera will work just fine. The goods thing is that the price of the cameras have come down a bit in the last two years. My advise would be to contact someone who is knowledgeable about the cameras who can give honest information regarding the range.
I would personally say that Flir are the market leader, both in terms of the quality, but also the range of products. Both the Flir i3 and i5 are good cameras for the cost and would in many cases be perfectly adequate for finding electrical faults or basic HVAC applications.
I appreciate that it is still an expensive piece of kit when comparing to Multifunction Testers or general electrical test equipment..

 

[mydigitalhome]

Possibly good for solar guys quick check on panels to see which cells have failed.

 

[vaughant]

I've used one when working in ford,but you didn't take a photo,you just pointed it into a panel and it picked up hotspots.
We also used the vibration analysis machine to check for bearing wear in univerter spindles,leadscrews etc and then a pretty cool bit of kit like a kind of air "microphone" for picking up and locating airleaks.
All this condition monitoring stuff,pretty commonplace in industry nowadays but domestically would need some justification really.
I'd say if you can get the equipment under £4-500 it's worth it,purely to demonstrate to clients how dangerous 6 way extension leads are when overloaded etc,up in lofts and so on,although it seems unlikely.