As an outsider looking in from what you’ve described it sounds far too complicated for an average HI to even perform an IR inspection correctly.
My experience has been 5 to 10 degrees warmer is typical. Like David is suggesting, if there is a good load, you should expect both the breaker and the conductors to be slightly warmer. We should note that AFCI breakers, in particular, are always 5 to 10 degrees warmer than the normal breakers due to the active electronic circuitry.
Here’s the thing. You can look at thermal of something known to be bad and compare it with something known to be good. With that baseline, you can make general assumptions about something that is either failing or conforming. You can make these observations with the cheapest, most garbage of a thermal image that isn’t calibrated, corrected, or even used properly. Once you know what something that isn’t performing properly looks like, it’ll scream at you.
As long as you aren’t making quantitative judgements “Breakers are 20 degrees too hot” or such, I see no issue with it. "Breakers appear to be hot, ammeter shows a draw of 38 amps on the 30 amp breaker, recommend a licensed, qualified electrician evaluate and repair as necessary.
I don’t need to be a master thermal imager with a $100,000 thermal camera with 40 years on the job to see a drop of hot water coming from a plumbing pipe. Nor do I need the same qualifications to see a ridge vent that’s working properly. Should everyone learn as much as possible, absolutely. HIs are generalists though and we need hints and a thermal camera can do that just fine.
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That’s because you don’t know what you are doing. If you did, you would understand how ridiculous your comments are.
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Yeah, I need 40 years OTJ to figure out what this means.
Or that this vent is working.
Or that this vent was covered over by the re-roofer.
Or even that this is entirely normal:
I can live at the peak of Mount Stupid as long as I like because the view is nice and that “Air of superiority” seems to be absent.
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So I think that what your saying is that you can get an indication that something may be wrong but then you use your experience to figure out what that may be.
So back to my original question from this thread. The OP mentioned a 2 pole, 30 amp breaker feeding a water heater, a common installation. With the heater running and everything normal what temperature reading would you expect to see at the circuit breaker? 5°, 10°, 20° above ambient?
Refer to my first post above! 
I knew this was going to happen, I just didn’t want to go there and make my post 3 pages long!
To start, the OP was about electrical. Is electrical defects not a major defect that kills people and burns down structures?! It is not like finding water drips in a ceiling after an ice storm.
I did not want to call the author of this thread a dumb-ass, but the question is the #1 stupid question IR camera owners ask. Don’t make me go there.
I am a fan of using IR as a glorified flashlight. How you use it, determines the acceptable use of the technology. Nothing goes in the report unless you can follow up with a significant defect IAW home inspection SOP.
Are you fine with HI’s doing Electrical work without the tools and license needed? I bet not.
How do they answer the electrician and client who is now paying that electrician because a breaker (taken in the Auto Mode without taking an Amperage reading) is 73.5F without knowing the principles of thermal imaging?
If you would then please explain to me what this means?
Maybe if I explain what needs consideration, camera owners might understand this is more than the digital camera on their phone. I’m not trying to make this more complicated than necessary, but like your multimeter, you need to understand what setting to use, where to put the probes, and what the readings mean.
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So based on your response could someone assume that you’re agreeing with my original statement that this type of testing is too complicated for the average HI?
The minimum thermal pixel resolution for a thermal camera is 160 x 120, which is equivalent to 19,200 pixels. This is considered low resolution, and is typically used in entry-level devices. What was the thermal pixel resolution of the equipment you where using?
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Quantitative or qualitative judgments are just as likely to fail without some training.
Emissivity, for example, is nearly always ignored or misunderstood by someone without training. They fail to understand whether thermal radiation is emitted, reflected, or transmitted. This is how you find HI’s writing up missing insulation in a wall when, in fact, they were measuring reflective heat from another source.
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For an untrained home inspector. I do not know how many home inspectors have good formal IR training, such as a minimum Level I cert.
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Why not? There’s nothing wrong with being honest.
I had a booth at the 2007 NAHI convention. There was another vendor at a booth near mine. The guy was a former home inspector who had stopped doing home inspections to concentrate on doing only thermal scans. A big part of his business was giving second opinions to people who had been told by a home inspector that there were problems that they supposedly discovered with their thermal imaging equipment.
The guy had hundreds of pictures of thermal scans where home inspectors had said there were problems when, in fact, there were none. The real problem is that poorly trained incompetent inspectors caused people to needlessly spend money on electricians and other professionals and often caused delays in completing a purchase, or even not completing the purchase.
Someone with absolutely no training at all should have enough common sense to know that if a thermal scan indicates a temperature that is barely above ambient, that’s not an indication of a problem. Furthermore, every home inspector ought to know that everything in an electrical panel is rated for at least 60°C. If an inspector lacks such basic knowledge, he has no business getting into any electrical panel. He is a danger to himself and others.
I refuse to coddle incompetent inspectors. They are a stain on the entire home inspection trade. There are way too many dumbasses out there with thermal imaging equipment scaring people because they don’t know what they are doing. They spend the money on the equipment but are too stupid or too lazy (or both) to get proper training.
The guy I met at the NAHI convention was making a good living because of incompetent inspectors. The sad thing is that he is in a business that shouldn’t even exist. It only exists because incompetent inspectors are misusing equipment to commit fraud.
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So in your opinion anyone performing these inspections should have at least a Level 1 certification? Do you think that many of the HI’s performing these types of inspections are so qualified?
I do not know. Our representation on this forum is poor. Most people come here with elementary questions because they lack training. When I took the class, there were approximately 25 students, about 10 of them were home inspectors. So there is hope
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And IMO that doesn’t include the INachi course. Unless it has been vastly updated. I took that very long course years ago and wasn’t too impressed.
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Basic electrical panel operating normally. Shrug. AFCI/GFCI run warmer. If one of those AFCI/GFCI breakers wasn’t warm, it would warrant further investigation. If one of those breakers was much warmer, it would warrant further investigation. When you see hundreds of panels that look like this, when you get one that doesn’t it warrants further investigation. I would never rely on this image for anything more than a clue that something is amiss. I investigate every panel and the thermal is just another tool, not the only, or primary tool, it’s an afterthought.
In the industrial world, we used to look at the panels for the big 3 phase motors and when one was starting to go, you could see it in the thermal image, plain as day. I wasn’t the thermal guy, but I was with him enough to see what it looks like when something was amiss.
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I see this is a hill you’re gonna die on. I recommend taking the classes, you can do it online in less than a week for a couple grand. They also have in person classes.
After the very first day I realized I didn’t know what I didn’t know. David is one of the few originals remaining, he’s not blowing smoke. I’ve worked beside him.
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One of the things that smart people do is to learn from other smart people. We are all smart about some things but dumb about most things. The smartest people are those who know that they don’t know and endeavor to learn from those who do. The dumbest people are the ones who don’t know their own limitations.
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Perhaps this older thread will shine a light from a different perspective…
(Recommend reading the entire thread from the beginning)…
Here’s the thing. I have worked around brilliant people. I am a sponge and I will absolutely listen when smarter people are talking. I also understand I don’t know what I don’t know. I get it, trust me. There’s no hill here and I ain’t dying on anything. Sometimes a duck is a duck and I don’t need to know the full taxonomic hierarchy of said aquatic fowl to know this. This is no way takes away from the fact that these data points are relevant and can be important. Limited scope, limited value, I understand this.
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