Heat reading camera shows heat loss sins ADVERTORIAL

Ruapehu Bulletin, Volume 13, Issue 589, 6 June 1995, Page 10

Heat reading camera shows heat loss sins ADVERTORIAL

Everybody knows that you can save money by living in an energy-efficient house, but it's not always easy to find out.how well-insulated your home is, let alone ways to improve it. King Country Energy have started their free energy checks service for homes or commercial premises in Ohakune, using a special infra-red heat 'seeing' camera. Dennis Malloy comes to your home or workplace ■ with the $42,000 camera and surveys your building, recording the findings onto video tape. He then reviews the tape with you, pointing out problems and offering solutions. Dennis and KCE marketing officer Bruce Clow surveyed the Ruapehu Bulletin office last week to demonstrate the service, and the findings ranged from the very predictable to the completely unexpected.

Being an old building, it was not surprising to find that the walls were not insulated. But also evident was the fact that heat was escaping up the wall cavities and out under the eaves of the roof, partly because there are no cross studs. The lost heat showed up clearly as bright white along the edge of the corrugated iron of the roof. What was also surprising was that heat was escaping quite rapidly from between the old weatherboards. The roof appeared to be well insulated, although some strange phenomena were observed. A loose nail and a small metal bracket showed up as bright white, indicating that they were conducting heat from through the roofing iron. The hot water cylinder overflow pipe appeared also bright white, indicating that hot water was flowing freely out of the pipe, another serious waste of energy.

Louvre windows showed their inefficiency in that a lot of heat was obviously escaping through them. Most windows showed up hotter around the edges than in the centre, indicating that some draught-stop fitting and gap-sealing would be in order. An unused door was also a surprise, showing poor insulation all over, plus a poor seal in one top corner where a massive amount of heat was being lost. Air vents in the building's photographic darkroom were discharging a lot of hot air, with the advice that if they were located lower down rather than at ceiling level, less heat would be lost.

While there were some inexpensive options available to reduce the heat loss, the survey showed that major work, such as recladding, would have to be carried out to remedy the worst of the problems. "In most cases you are going to have to spend some money to save some money," said Dennis. It is not just old buildings that are worth surveying. Bruce showed a segment of video that highlighted the worth of surveying a modern building. A Taumarunui home he surveyed turned out to have a whole section of one wall with no insulation at all, despite the builder's assurances that the whole house was insulated.