It's Baaack! Winter has come to La La land once again.

Yep! Winter is back here in Southern California once again.  Of course, we don't know for how long it will stay!
It has a history of wandering in and out several times a year.  I've gone to the beach on Christmas day and worn shorts and flip flops in January.
All this unpredictability makes it hard to schedule any maintenance on one's home or business.  If you have moisture leaks and need to schedule repairs, it's almost guaranteed that it will rain on the day of the repair. Murphy's Law is alive and well down here!

Then there is the situation I described in an earlier blog called "I Hate Nice Weather".  You see, when it rains, my phone rings.  It's as simple as that.  Roofs wear out over time.  It's not a matter of IF, only WHEN.  When the do leak, it's often not all that obvious where its coming from exactly.  The usual scenario is to have the roofer come out to fix it but they cannot be sure where the exact leak is coming from so as a result, you get to pay for a "shotgun" fix.  Even then, it may not be successful.  Guess what?  I can help!

Thermal-Diagnostics and it's sister company Magic Leak Finders has had great success in locating leaks when others have been unsuccessful at doing so.

Here is a testimonial from one of my clients:

"I had a client which operated a health clinic in a multi story building. They kept having odd roof leaks where other contractors and roofers could not pin point and resolve the leak. I had Dana go to the site and do a thermal diagnotic inspection using his special infra red camera and other moisture detection devices and he was able to pin point the exact source of the leak and coordinate with the roofer for a correct repair. This can be a valuable service since it can prevent over excessive roof replacement and exactly determine the source of the problem. In this case with the health clinic, it was critical to maintain a healthy environment and leaks inside buildings can cause moisture damage and mold problems. 
Thanks for your great service Dana.
Sincerely,
Bud Hayes” 

Here is another:

“Dana is a very diligent professional, who has made himself very well trained in thermography. He always does everything possible to deliver exceptionally good products to his clients.” :Steve Nichols, La Rocca Inspection Associates 

Isn't is time for you to call Thermal-Diagnostics and Magic Leak Finders and have your interior and roof scanned?  There may be leaks that you don't even know about yet.

The HEAT is coming! Are you prepared to pay those high ENERGY bills?

Yes, summer is coming. Here in Southern California, we have already had a little taste or two of it.

If you are like me, you are not looking forward to those big energy bills that come with keeping your house cool enough to live in. Like many of you may do, I work out of my home. With four computers, two printers, and various other heat producing electrical items, my office would soon turn into a sauna if I didn't run the air conditioning. The downside of running it is a large increase in energy use.

A little information about energy transfer to think about. The laws of Thermodynamics.

Essentially, nature abhors imbalance. Energy will always attempt to equalize when an imbalance exists. A higher state of energy, in our case heat, will always move towards a lower state of energy, cold. Simply put, heat moves to cold.

Energy, in this case heat energy, moves or transfers in one of several ways:

• Convection: Convection occurs primarily due to the difference in density of the medium, be it liquid or a gas like air. Warm air (less dense) rises. Cold air (more dense) settles or sinks.
• Conduction: Conduction is the process of energy transfer through solid materials. Think of a cold interior metal window frame when it's freezing outside.
• Radiation: Radiation occurs when energy transfer is from a solid material into the surrounding space. Think of the heat that you feel radiating off a hot object.

How does this apply to heating and cooling your home? Can you do anything about this?

Yes, in many cases you can. There are several low-cost/no-cost things that you can do to reduce your energy consumption and the bills that go with it.

The first thing one needs to do is to actually be aware of the environment of your home.

Solar heat gain is one of the biggest enemies we all face. Take the time to observe just how the sun shines on your house at various parts of the day. Make note of the window areas in the parts of the house of the sun shines on. Notice the angle of shadows or shading on your house's exterior walls and roof.

As the seasons change, the angle at which the sunlight strikes your house also changes. During the fall and winter months the sun's angle is relatively low compared to the horizon. In the summer, just the opposite is true, the sun's angle is quite high. You can take advantage of the phenomenon in a number of ways.

• Trees, especially deciduous varieties (those that lose their leaves in the wintertime) can be an effective solar control method. During the winter months, when the sun angle is low, the leafless trees allow the sun to shine on and into your house providing free solar heating. Free is good, right?  During the spring and summer months when these trees now have their leaves and the sun angle is high, these trees provide wonderful shade that blocks much of the solar  heat gain that you don't want .
• Awnings:  Did you ever wonder why many of the older homes you see have awnings? They weren't just an architectural device put there for the "look". They actually served a purpose!  A properly designed and placed awning takes advantage of the high summer sun angle and blocks much of the solar gain that would be impacting the interior of the house were they not there. Awnings can do the job effectively without impeding the view from the window. Nice!
• Window treatments:  If you can't take advantage of nice mature trees and you don't like the look of awnings you may still be able to do something effective to cut down on the solar gain. Some ways are more effective than others. The most preferable way to block the greenhouse effect from heating up your rooms is to apply a "radiant barrier film" on the inside of the windows. This will stop some but not all of the solar heat gain and still allow you to get natural lighting and to be able to see out of the window. Another way is to install "thermal" blinds or shades on the insides of the Windows. Curtains can also help if you remember to close them.

Changing your habits.

• Lighting and equipment: Were you aware that most large commercial office buildings need to run air-conditioning systems year-round due to the heat load produced by occupancy and operating equipment like lighting, computers, printers and copy machines. It is for this reason that most current commercial energy codes do not permit incandescent lighting these days. Switching out your existing incandescent lighting for compact fluorescent lighting can go a long way towards reducing the heat load. Turning off lights in rooms that you are not actively occupying or better yet, installing timers or motion detector devices to turn them off after a period of time. Turning off electrical equipment that is not being used will also help. Most of today's computer equipment, printers and copy machines have an "auto sleep" mode that puts them into standby after a set period of time of inactivity. These time periods are often adjustable.

Spend a little money to save a lot!

• Insulation: Properly insulating your attic, if you have one, can generate substantial energy saving.  For a very graphic illustration of this concept, visit my webpage at Magic Leak Finders. Or here: Thermal-Diagnostics. These are thermal images of the ceilings around my home. The attic is insulated but it was poorly done and not as effective as it should be. The "hot spots" are radiating a substantial amount of heat into this space at the same time I'm paying to cool it! Not very cost effective.
• Weather-stripping:  Preventing infiltration/ex-filtration of conditioned air is another way to save energy. Having loose fitting doors and windows that are not properly sealed is allowing the cool air provided by your air conditioner to escape and the hot air from outside to get in.
• Replacement windows: While this option is a bit more expensive and brings with it a longer ROI, over time replacing old, leaky and inefficient single pane windows with new wood or vinyl double pane windows with "low-E" glass can save on your heating and cooling costs.
• High efficiency heating/cooling system:  This option can be one of the most expensive but can realize substantial savings over a longer period of time. If you are in an older home that has an older system installed, it is consuming a lot more energy to heat and cool your home than is necessary. Replacing these old inefficient systems with new high SEER (seasonal energy efficiency rating) units will save a lot of energy use.

I hope this article will open a few eyes and point you down the path of energy savings and lower utility bills. It's not that hard and "picking the low hanging fruit" options such as landscaping, weather-stripping, window coverings, change of habits, and replacing inefficient heat generating incandescent lighting with compact fluorescent lighting don't cost all that much and, in combination, may generate a big savings on your utility bills this summer. If you would like help evaluating your residence or office for potential energy savings please contact me via the above listed websites.

Thanks

Dana Bostick

Certified Level 1 Thermographer at http://www.thermal-diagnostics.com

Technorati Tags: Energy saving,energy efficiency,infrared,infrared scanning,save money on energy bills

Using Thermal Infrared for Roof Leak Detection

Finding flat roof leaks

Many buildings, both commercial and residential, have flat or low sloped roofs. The roof coverings can be of many types.

• Tar and gravel
  • Consisting of a concrete or wood roof deck over which layers of heavy felt roofing paper are built up and sealed using hot tar. A top layer of gravel is usually added to act as a sunscreen.
• "Torch down"
  • A composition roofing material that comes in rolls and is applied in the long, overlapping strips. The backside of the material has an adhesive coating that is heated with a large propane torch to make it tacky so that it bonds to the surface it is being applied to as well as the adjacent strips of roofing.
• Membrane or diaphragm roof covering.
  • This type of roof covering consists of a single layer of EPDM material that is "heat welded" together at the seams. This type of roof may or may not have ballast in the form of gravel or rocks added to the top to prevent lifting or "ballooning" due to wind pressure passing over the roof.

Finding leaks.

Finding leaks in a flat roof system can be difficult. 
typically, physical inspection is performed to detect any obvious areas of concern such as unsealed roof penetrations by plumbing or other mechanical equipment, missing or damaged parapet flashings and physical damage or deterioration of the roof covering itself.

Usually, a leak will manifest itself as moisture intrusion on the interior finish surfaces. Unfortunately, there is often not a direct relationship between the location of the leak and where it shows up on the inside of the building. Water will obey the laws of gravity as well as take the path of least resistance and may travel many feet along structural components before dripping off onto the ceiling itself and alerting the occupant to a problem.

Barring the presence of any physically identifiable defects in the roof covering itself, finding the actual source of the leak can be quite difficult. The usual method of repair is to have the roofer reseal every possible leak source in the vicinity of the interior leak. Sometimes this is effective, often it's not. If the exact location of the leak cannot be identified, many roofers would just suggest a tear off and recover or just a recover of the entire roof. While this “shotgun” method may solve the problem, it's expensive, not very efficient and adds a lot of perfectly good roofing material to the landfill.  Not very “Green”!

Thermal Infrared Scanning to the Rescue!

Due to a property called "thermal mass" saturated roof decks and insulation will absorb and hold more heat from the sun during the day than the dry areas of the roof. This heat can be detected as infrared radiation and quickly spotted by a specialized, high tech Thermal Imager like the FLIR B-CAM used by The Magic Leak Finders.

Roof surface during the daylight hours absorbs heat.  The wet areas absorb more and hold it longer due to increased thermal mass of the wet materials.

At night, during a time of maximum heat difference between the cold sky and the warm roof deck, the wet areas will show up in the thermal imager as a “thermal hot-spot”.

The light yellow areas of this picture are the saturated areas of this roof system.

As the building owner, what does this mean for you?

By using a company like Thermal-Diagnostics & Magic Leak Finders to quickly identify the source of the leak, you could potentially save a significant amount of money by avoiding a complete roof replacement or recover when not necessary and only repair the areas that need it.

The cost difference can be significant.  Compare the cost of a full roof replacement or recover at $3 to $5 per square foot to the cost of a Thermal Roof Scan and repair of the leaking areas only.

In the Los Angeles, Ventura & Orange County areas, contact

Dana Bostick, Certified Thermographer

Technorati Tags: roof leaks,water leak,infrared scanning,roof replacement,thermal infrared scanning