Are your occupants complaining about drafts, cold spots, ice dams, frozen pipes, or excessive heating and cooling costs?

Your building could be affected by one or more of these common problems:

Stack Effect: Even small gaps in the building’s upper structural components or cladding can allow significant amounts of heated air to escape (exfiltration). As warm air exits the upper parts of the building, cold outside air is sucked in at lower levels to replace it (infiltration). Occupants may complain of drafts, cold spots and other discomforts. The escaping warm, moist air condenses when it contacts colder surfaces in the building envelope, creating moisture build-up inside walls and building materials.

Insulation Problems: Moisture rapidly reduces the insulating power (R-value) of wall and roof insulation, causing large year-round energy losses that can be accurately detected with infrared thermography. Our building envelope inspections also verify the proper installation of insulating materials. If your building has wet, missing, misplaced, or compressed insulation, our certified thermographers will pinpoint and document the problems so you can plan the most cost-effective repairs.

Infrared building envelope analysis is the only proven, nondestructive and complete method for troubleshooting building heat loss and moisture problems. Building owners use envelope testing to save millions of dollars every year by reducing energy costs, minimizing structural damage, and enhancing occupant comfort and health. An Infra-red Analyzers heat loss survey can help you:

• Pinpoint missing, damaged or wet insulation
• Locate causes of frozen pipes and ice dams
• Prioritize and document heat loss problems
• Identify sources of air and water infiltration
• Detect conditions likely to support growth of mold and mildew
• Reduce heating and cooling costs
• Determine best options for energy-saving renovation and retrofits
• Identify cost-effective strategies for achieving LEED credits
• Increase energy efficiency and boost profits

Heat losses from buildings are accelerated by structural problems, poor construction practices, missing or inadequate insulation, moisture infiltration and air leakage. Escaping heat creates a thermal signature that can be detected with infrared thermography. Building envelope analysis pinpoints underlying problems in the physical plant. From this data we produce a comprehensive report to provide the building owner with detailed information about the locations, causes and extent of problems in the building envelope.

Blower door test reveals extent of building air leakage.

Our Certified Thermographers use cutting-edge infrared detection technology to rapidly and accurately identify hidden problems that waste your energy dollars and threaten the integrity of your building. At most facilities, data collection can be completed in just one or two days, without disrupting your operations.

Blower Door Testing: With today’s concerns for energy conservation and carbon footprint reduction, determining the energy efficiency of a building has become an essential cost-containing tool for the building owner. Properly installed insulation is one major contributing component to a building’s performance. Air leakage problems, however, are often overlooked. In many buildings, excessive air leakage is the biggest factor reducing energy-efficient performance.

A Blower Door is a diagnostic tool that measures the degree of a building’s “air tightness.” Blower Doors provide a reliable, highly accurate and cost-effective method for determining a building’s air leakage performance. Infra-red Analyzers' blower door systems and methodology meet the latest ASTM standard (E779-03). Our blower door testing services provide critical information separately or in combination with our comprehensive infrared building envelope analysis.

By placing the building under a known pressure, a Blower Door test allows the technician to measure how much building airflow is required to maintain a certain pressure differential between indoors and outdoors. The number of air changes per hour (the complete replacement of the indoor air volume of the building in one hour) at a standard pressure differential (interior pressure compared to exterior pressure, measured in Pascals) reveals the building envelope's air leakage profile.