From Sustainable Witney:
OK, so you’ve finally fixed the dud units in your double glazing, and you’ve taken advantage of the local offers on loft and cavity insulation. You’ve got a draught excluder behind the front door and you’ve even fitted one of those brushes behind your letterbox.
It’s difficult, when you’ve made the obvious improvements, to work out what’s next on the list of fixes that can keep your house toasty and warm in winter, and cool in summer. If only you could see the heat loss from the property, as if it were a bright light shining from under the eaves; heat, like a car’s headlights, peeking out from the gap where the insulation wasn’t properly laid.
Well, thermal imaging cameras do just that: if you take thermal photographs when the house temperature is at least 10°C higher than outside, then that causes enough heat loss to be picked up by the right kit.
A professional session with thermal imaging equipment can be expensive, but you might have found yourself before Christmas leafing through a copy of the Winter 2011 edition of Creating Futures, West Oxfordshire District Council’s newsletter. And you’ll spot on page 7 the good eggs fromTransition Eynsham Area advertising the very thing this blogpost is about: WODC is teaming up with groups like TEA and Sustainable Witney to conduct thermal surveys on volunteer properties around the region.
Unfortunately, demand was so high that before our long-suffering Brigitte could check her inbox, the thermal imaging was hugely oversubscribed. After all, there comes a time some point in spring – earlier than it used to be – when it’s uncomfortable to heat your house so much more more than the outside temperature. So we’ve only got till February or March to fit everyone in.
But once the surveys are done, we’ll report back here; and maybe if it’s popular enough, we’ll get another play with the camera next winter!