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07 / Thermal imaging
Infrared thermography
Heat gives a defect away long before anything has to be opened up, lifted or cut. A service in its own right, inside buildings and out, with handheld cameras and a thermography drone.
What it measures
Every surface radiates infrared in proportion to its temperature and emissivity. A thermal camera turns that into an image. What it reveals is not the defect itself but the heat-flow anomaly the defect causes — missing insulation, air moving where it should not, water where it should not be, debonded material that no longer conducts heat into the layer beneath it.
That indirection is the whole skill. A cold patch on a wall can be missing insulation, thermal bridging by design, air leakage or trapped moisture, and telling them apart depends on conditions, timing and what the building is doing — not on the camera.
Conditions decide whether it works
Thermography needs a temperature differential to drive heat through the element being examined. Envelope work needs a meaningful inside-outside difference and is best in the heating season, early or late in the day. Flat roof surveys are run after sunset, when wet insulation that stored solar gain all day radiates it back while the dry areas have already cooled.
Booking a thermal survey for a mild overcast afternoon because that is when the site is free will produce a report with nothing in it. We schedule to the physics and say so plainly when a requested window will not work.
Where we use it
- Building envelope — insulation continuity, thermal bridging, air leakage, commonly with a blower door to drive the pressure difference.
- Roofs and flat decks — trapped moisture in the insulation, mapped as an area to be cut out rather than a whole roof to be replaced.
- Moisture ingress in walls, floors and below slab.
- Underfloor heating loops, located before anyone drills or fixes.
- Bridge decks and pavement — delamination, usually alongside radar, which sees depth where thermal sees extent.
- Electrical and mechanical — hot spots in boards, connections, bearings and motors.
Equipment and capability
- Radiometric handheld cameras
- Thermography drone for roofs, facades and acreage
- Blower door pressurization
- Roof moisture surveys after dark
- Bridge deck and pavement delamination
- Electrical and mechanical condition surveys
What you receive
Paired thermal and visual images for every finding, located on a plan or elevation, with the ambient conditions and differential at the time of survey recorded — because a thermal report without its conditions cannot be assessed or repeated.
Ask before you commission
Tell us the target, the ground and the constraint and we will say whether this method answers it, whether it needs a second method alongside, or whether something else entirely is the better route. That conversation is free and it is usually short.