Could a thermal camera reveal your hidden heat loss?

Louise Green, a designer in London, says she read online training materials before using a thermal camera to search for points of heat loss in a house shortly after she and her partner moved in.

In her case, Miss Green rented the camera from Library of Things, a community-focused organisation that makes various items available for people to borrow. The device indicated loss of heat around windows and doors in Miss Green’s home. She and her partner were able to compare the results to their neighbour’s better-insulated property.

“It just confirmed what we knew already, but it was still interesting to see, you know, were there any other areas?” she explains.

Darrell Taylor at Flir, a firm that makes thermal cameras, says that members of the public can access some free training materials on his company’s website.

He adds that Flir aims to make thermal images as clear and easy to interpret as possible – including by merging optical imagery with thermal imagery, to add more detail to the final picture. And he suggests that, in the future, Flir cameras may offer machine learning-based instructions and advice as people use the devices.

Those who know how best to interpret thermal camera imagery can find extraordinary hidden problems in a building, though.

Dr Bardhan recently took a very high resolution camera to a viewing of a house she was considering buying. But the thermal images revealed cracks in a wall, which later proved to be signs of subsidence.

“That would probably not have been exposed unless I had gone in and seen it,” she says. Dr Bardhan decided not to make an offer on the property.