In this cold weather, we’ve been seeing what our thermal camera can tell us about where the heat is escaping from local homes. Our hope is these examples can help people in the village identify what remedial actions might suit their home to prevent heat loss.

If you want to find out where your home is losing the most heat, a visit with the camera could be the solution as it indicates the temperature of surfaces around the home. What we are looking for is discrepancies between the average room temperature and that of its walls, floors, ceilings, windows and doors.

The camera certainly shows up how cold the edges of doors and windows can be – especially along the base. In the following photos, black is coldest, blue is cold, and red is warm.

This image shows how cold it gets around the edges of an old set of patio doors

We’ve spotted a few signs of uneven insulation around these properties – squirrels in the loft can play havoc with the Rockwool.  And, we’ve seen signs of polystyrene-bead cavity wall insulation settling unevenly, creating a pattern around the wall ties.

The cavity wall insulation here has evident cold spots around the wall ties

Cold spots show up along wall edges, and often top corners of outside walls. These are the spots to watch for damp and condensation which can lead to mold growth.

Loft insulation is one of the most cost-effective measures to take to insulate your home.  Most people by now have a few inches between the rafters. What the camera has shown up is that there’s a good reason for the current standard being more like 11 inches, rather than the building regulated 9–11 inches. In any roof, the rafters let heat escape, which you can see as cooler stripes. If the space has been converted to a room, this becomes very evident in the imaging.

When a loft space is converted to a room, insulation is often placed between the rafters, meaning the rafters themselves remain a passage for heat

We’ve also helped people with complicated attic rooms or extensions to check whether all the surfaces have been insulated – it’s easy to miss one. For example, in a couple of homes, timber cladding used as an ornamental feature actually had no bricks or insulation behind it, creating a serious heat escape route.

The grid pattern here shows the roof structure and thin insulation

It has been good to see the difference secondary glazing makes to an older property where double glazing may not always be an option.

The red areas on the door of this home built in the 1870s show the weak spots around the single-glazed stained glass and wood panel. The window however has been completed with secondary glazing, reducing heat loss

The images show us how helpful the camera is for identifying what (if any) insulation is already in place. Though we can’t give specific recommendations, we will be able to identify common issues with the village’s housing stock and suggest broad solutions for homeowners to investigate.

If you would like to schedule a visit from a member of our group with the thermal imaging camera, please contact Info@kinverclimate.co.uk with your details (name, address, tel/email) and availability, and we’ll be in touch to fix an appointment. These are best done in cooler weather, earlier or later in the day when the sun is not warming the building. As such, we will be looking to conduct these throughout the next month or so.