Maine House Doctor

Here are some infrared pictures from past Audits, just to give you some idea of what we can find, and why we need these very expensive tools to do our work.

	This is a shot of cold air, coming in from the soffit vent, flowing down the wall (through the insulation), to a forced hot air heating duct at the base of the wall that is clearly disconnected or leaking badly. This defect would be absolutely invisible and undetectable without the Blower-Door and the IR Camera. [In the 2nd picture, taken from the outside, this heat leak is visible with the furnice running as a warm (redish-orange) are to the right of the window.] Normally, heat would be flowing in the oposite direction when the furnace was running; but we've got the house depressurized using the blower door. This home is a double-wide high-quality manufactured home on a slab. It's only 3 years old. The owner called because his heating bills were high. I wonder why?
	Same house as above; these pictures are of the inside "marriage" wall and roof peak where the 2 halfs of the home are joined together "on-site" after being trucked in. There is clearly major leakage here. This problem arises in many homes. The roof has a "ridge vent" system. The ridge pole or rafter-peak is the end-point for the fiberglass insulation, and usually, it's not well fitted. There is a "gap" here from "outside" down into the ceiling. If there is any kind of leakage possible through the interior ceiling material, then you have a direct venting of the living space to the outside, occurring at the highest and warmest point of the house!
	This is an IR image of a circuline florescent light on the ceiling. There is clearly lots of air leaking in here, which means lots of heat leaks out.