IR & roof leaks

[Chris Bernhardt]

I had completed my visual inspection and was just starting my IR scan of the family room addition when I discovered this.

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Infrared composite pic of drip pattern in carpet next to interior wall in a family room addition.

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View of carpet. Carpet felt dry to the touch.

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Composite IR pic of wall and ceiling. Dark areas scanned positive for moisture with my moisture meters.

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View of ceiling. There is a fine joint crack, otherwise there are no moisture stains or other visual signs of leaking.

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View of roof. I think it's either leaking in the valley or at the skylight and then following the original top chord of the truss down to the top of the wall just past the other side of the skylight. I could not get to this area in the attic.

I would have never found it without using an IR camera.

Chris, Oregon

[randynavarro]

Nice.

[mthomas1]

Deleted

[msteger]

IR cameras sure are a nice addition to the inspector's toolbox, but the cost is outside most of our budgets. As the technology gets cheaper, I plan to add one of these to my toolbelt to help my client and lower my liability.

[randynavarro]

Michael, which photo program are you using?

Nice work, by the way.

[mthomas1]

Randy,

I use Photoshop Elements, there's a steep learning curve to get started, but one you understand it you can do just about anything you could want to/with a photograph.

I probably spend about 10-15 minutes on each of the more complicated annotated diagrams I construct from manufacturers documentation (less, probably around five minutes, if I'm just taking a picture of a page in the manual, and labeling it).

However the ones I spend significant amounts of time on are the ones I expect will be reusable, these days I get almost no callbacks from clients asking me to explain things further, and I get a lot less static from builders, developers, and tradespeople - it's a harder to argue with the manufacturers instructions than with "that idiot home inspector".

I find this to be a major stress reduce or as I have some control over when I'm writing reports and constructing material for use in them, but no control over the timing of subsequent customer and vendor queries.

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[Kyle Kubs]

Sweet.

Someday I'm going to get one of those things. If nothing else I'll be able to see where animals are waiting in the woods at night before I tell the dog he's allowed to go dump. Two weeks ago I turned around and he's standing right next to a skunk! [:-bigeyes