IR

[kurt]

Sucker builder, nothing but obnoxious. I say the shower looks suspect. He says "$50,000 says my tile guy did it right". I says, "lemme run the shower for a while, and I'll get back to you".

The dark blue spots measured out about 90% after an hour of the shower running. Couldn't see nothing bare eyed. Nothing.

In the continual thrashing back and forth of thinking my IR cam is cool to thinking I wasted a ton of money, I'm swinging back into the "it's cool" category. This one got me some serious cred.

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[Bain]

In the continual thrashing back and forth of thinking my IR cam is cool to thinking I wasted a ton of money . . .

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Hah, that's exactly how my brain works. I looked at a tiled pan yesterday that was probably leaking, but had no way to verify. Your camera would have come in awfully handy.

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[Scottpat]

Kurt, what IR cam did you endup getting?

[kurt]

Kurt, what IR cam did you endup getting?

Fluke TiR32. I wasn't going to buy any tool that didn't have interchangeable batteries with a charger, and interchangeable lenses. It is an absolutely perfect machine for our use. I've talked it over with Scott Warga, and he agrees; he's got one on order, and he's done more IR than anyone I know.

And, I wanted the resolution. Resolution is really, really important because some of the the anomalies are just plain teeny tiny and barely perceptible. It's a surprisingly tricky bit of interpretation to figure out what's water and what's not.

[Terence McCann]

Kurt, do you have a picture of the shower without the IR present?

[Chris Bernhardt]

Kurt,

What is the IR pic of? shower pan? Above or below?

What led you to think there was a problem before you conducted the test or are you conducting the test irrespective of any visual evidence of a problem?

Chris, Oregon

[kurt]

Kurt, do you have a picture of the shower without the IR present?

Terry

http://www.hlis.net

Just your basic yuppie turbo shower with the side sprayers.

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Kurt,

What is the IR pic of? shower pan? Above or below?

What led you to think there was a problem before you conducted the test or are you conducting the test irrespective of any visual evidence of a problem?

Chris, Oregon

It's the kitchen drywall ceiling below. You're looking up at an angle; pick out the blue straight lines @ right angles; those are drywall seams. The blue round things were measuring about 17% moisture content, the seams about 90%.

The difference of temperature was not more than about 2degF.

I look because there's always a problem with shower pan liners, especially with side sprayers and benches. There's a lot of multi-nozzle turbo showers around here.

Procedure is find shower, turn on side sprayers, point @ bench for 1 hour while I do the rest of the inspection. About 3 out of 5 show me an anomaly, and 2 out of 5 I can measure >30% with the PSM. Either way, I've almost gotten to challenging everyone on the shower pan liner if they disagree with me; most of them are wrong. If I can find almost half, that means there's more than half are bad.

Folks remember it when you find stuff this way, don't they......around here, that's a 7k shower to tear out and replace.

[Terence McCann]

Procedure is find shower, turn on side sprayers, point @ bench for 1 hour while I do the rest of the inspection. About 3 out of 5 show me an anomaly, and 2 out of 5 I can measure >30% with the PSM.

If I understand correctly Kurt you run for an hour then (before you had an IR) test the ceiling below with the SM?

[caryseidner]

Mike Parrett gave an 8 hour seminar on Damp this weekend at a local ASHI seminar I attended, and had some interesting things to say about moisture meters.

Unless you're testing wood, they are only good for showing when water is not present. He stuck the pins of a PSM into the core of a bone dry cynder block filled with clinker (sp?) ash, and the meter read something like 80%. Apparently the ash has carbon in it, as do many other buliding materials, which give a false positive.

I'm not disagreeing with Kurt's analysis of this situation, just thought you all might find that interesting.

[kurt]

Procedure is find shower, turn on side sprayers, point @ bench for 1 hour while I do the rest of the inspection. About 3 out of 5 show me an anomaly, and 2 out of 5 I can measure >30% with the PSM.

If I understand correctly Kurt you run for an hour then (before you had an IR) test the ceiling below with the SM?

Before IR, testing the ceiling with the PSM would not have been feasible. The area of measurable moisture was really very small relative to the surface area. And, they showed up laterally from the dead center of the shower; where do you start measuring?

I was testing all over and around the areas indicated by IR, and it still took a while (a few minutes standing on countertops) to orient the picture to the readings.

[kurt]

Mike Parrett gave an 8 hour seminar on Damp this weekend at a local ASHI seminar I attended, and had some interesting things to say about moisture meters.

Unless you're testing wood, they are only good for showing when water is not present. He stuck the pins of a PSM into the core of a bone dry cynder block filled with clinker (sp?) ash, and the meter read something like 80%. Apparently the ash has carbon in it, as do many other buliding materials, which give a false positive.

I'm not disagreeing with Kurt's analysis of this situation, just thought you all might find that interesting.

Mike's brilliant, as in very brilliant, but that thing he does to place doubt on the Protimeter is not particularly fair. Of course, if you stack a block with fly ash, you're going to get a reading. He works in an environment of ancient masonry with fly ash; we (almost) never do. Maybe Kibbel does, every once and a while.

A PSM will tell you if there's wet drywall or plaster just fine.

[Terence McCann]

One last question Kurt, did you take an IR picture of the same area before running the shower (although I guess it wouldn't make any difference on the outcome - wet is wet).

[Jim Katen]

So, Kurt, what are you going to do with the 50G?

- Jim Katen, Oregon

[kurt]

So, Kurt, what are you going to do with the 50G?

- Jim Katen, Oregon

Protimeter Surveymaster about $480.

Fluke TiR32 $XXXX (about the cost of a decent used car)

Seeing the look on the shiteaters face when I hit paydirt?

Priceless. IOW, I ain't getting nothing but bad looks from that guy.

Terrence, you answered your own question.

[Ben H]

So, Kurt, what are you going to do with the 50G?

- Jim Katen, Oregon

Buy us all a new Fluke IR cam so we can keep the stories flowing.[]

[davidlord]

This is a pic of a leak from an upstairs bathtub in a new house. Plumber opens wll and finds bad waste connection. Never would have seen this with out the IR. Would have showed up several weeks later after client moved in. They think I'm brilliant and I'm not telling them any different.

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[palmettoinspect]

Kurt and David, what kind of training have you participated in to learn thermograph? I just picked up a IR camera and so far found some roof leaks with my own home confirmed with the MMS. I would like to start offering IR with my inspection just want to make sure I know what I'm doing.

[Tom Raymond]

David, is that image created by your camera or by software? My Bcam will do an overlay like that but it uses two different CCDs and the images never line up that nicely.