Thermal Imaging

Many of the more expensive problems in a house give no visible warning. Moisture can track through a wall cavity for an entire season before it stains a ceiling. Insulation settles behind clean drywall and leaves a cold void that nobody knows about until the heating bill arrives. Electrical connections sometimes run hot for months before anything actually fails.

Key Home Inspection uses professional thermal imaging to bring conditions like these into view, without cutting, drilling or disturbing any finish in the home. It is part of how we turn a visual inspection into a fuller picture of the property.

A thermal imaging camera measures the infrared energy radiating from a surface and turns it into a temperature map. It is not a photograph of the room.

This is useful because most defects hidden behind a finished surface change the temperature of that surface in some way. Wet insulation conducts heat differently than dry insulation. A gap in attic insulation shows up as a warm patch on the ceiling below it. Air pushing past a failed window seal cools the drywall around the frame. An overloaded breaker gives off heat.

The scan itself is non-invasive. Nothing gets opened up or removed.

Under suitable conditions, an infrared scan can help identify:

• Hidden moisture and water intrusion. Active leaks, past water damage, and damp areas behind finished surfaces.
• Missing, settled or damaged insulation. The cold spots and thermal gaps that quietly raise a heating bill every winter.
• Air leakage and drafts. Around windows, doors, attic hatches and other openings in the building envelope.
• Overheating electrical components. Connections and circuits running warmer than they should be.
• Heat loss through ceilings and roofs. Including the conditions that lead to ice damming.
• Concealed building elements. Framing, ductwork and in-floor heating runs behind walls and under floors.

An infrared camera shows temperature. Working out what that temperature means is a separate job. Anything the camera flags gets treated as a lead worth investigating rather than a finding on its own.

Freeze-thaw cycles, ice damming, driving rain and long heating seasons put steady pressure on a building envelope. Those same conditions create the indoor-outdoor temperature difference that makes infrared scanning effective here.

With over 20 years inspecting homes across Toronto, the GTA and Durham Region, we know how these houses behave through a winter and where problems tend to turn up.

Thermal imaging shows conditions that a visual inspection on its own would miss. It is worth considering whether you are buying, selling, or planning work on a house you already own.