Until you look at it through your thermal imager. . .
Jeff,
Pretty wild and impressive. Did you suspect something or just picked this up randomly? I went along with someone doing some motel rooms with an IR camera and like yours the walls (around the windows) looked normal but many had very obvious water intrusion going on. I did some of the checking with moisture meters and they were pegging out and in some rooms the musky odor was apparent but no visible signs of water.
Part of my standard protocol is to “scan” the entire house at the beginning and end of an inspection. Generally, just for my own curiosity. I haven’t had my “formal” training yet, so I don’t promote thermal imaging as being part of the inspection.
This was at the end of the inspection so it was (for the most part) random. This is the kitchen ceiling after running the master shower for a few minutes. . .
Nice catch Jeff…those Cams are simply amazing!
Jeff,
Which Flir camera did you purchase? I’m considering…
Dave,
I believe Jeff initially purchased a BCam, and quickly replaced it with a BCam SD…
or I seem to remember that …:roll:
Mike is correct. I have the BCAM SD.
Jeff;
Could you explain to me what the colors mean?
Curious how all this thing works.
Marcel 
Well I’m paying $1600 to learn this, but I’ll give you the simplified version 
The colors are simply temperature differences, you’ll notice there is only a 9 degree difference between the lightest and darkest areas of the image.
The water from the leaking shower pan has changed the temperature of the drywall. The darker areas show where more water has accumulated or saturated. The darkest area is actually the drywall seam, you can see a slight paint “bubble” in this area in the “camera” images.
Thanks Jeff.
I guess noone said education was cheap, right? ha. ha.
Marcel
And that only consists of one course. There are several additional certification courses that Flir offers as well. All for $1650.00 a course. It can be very expensive to participate in several courses.
Jeff,
Are you taking the Building Science course or Level oneThermography?
Jeff,
Flir does have the more expensive B2 camera with the wide angle lens option. That’s the exact camera I was thinking of purchasing. It allows you to view the entire house in one screen shot.
Question - With your BCAM SD…Standing in front of a house, are you able to see the entire house (in the view finder) or do you have to slowly scan the entire exterior?
Which is the camera that they use for all of thier sales pitches and brochures ?
Mic
JP,
Those are great images!!!
Bring them, and all pics you have taken to class.
When you can get stuff like that with a BCAM your on top of it.
Don’t get too wrapped up in the high end stuff, we are still just HI’s and until you go beyond that there is really no need for more. It is more important to get started than it is to wait to get the camera of your choice.
A Yugo will get you to work so you can buy that Corvette!
Anyone interested or planning to attend the ITC course and want more info. feel free to contact me.
We (other NACHI members and myself) had a great experience in Boston last week. My head is still swimming from all the input from the course and those that attended. I don’t think I sat in a class with so much accumulative knowledge in quite a while. Your not just preached to, the class members bring as much to the table as the course provides.
If you go, take advantage of it and talk with your neighbors in class! They come from around the world and see things in a different light.
If you can go to Boston, go.
Folks from FLIR came by the class and rendered a huge amount of support to the class concerning their equipment and software.
David, I would not buy a camera with a wide angle lens, I was with Dave at the course and the wider the lens the more pixels you will loose. It’s better to have a camera with more sensitivity and the software will allow you to “stitch” picture together for your report.
Also, anyone considering this should download Will Deckers PP on thermal imagining, take it to staples and have them print it out for you, then put it in a binder and study it before you go, it will help you tremendously understanding the course.
Also Dave, get in touch with me and I will forward the contact info. of someone at Flir that will personally give you a tour and answer any questions you have. My brother Alan and I did and it was great, they are located in NO. Billerica of Trebble Cove Road.
PS it was great to take this class with fellow NACHI members Dave from TN. and John from FL.
I just received my B-cam last week and have not had much time to play around with it. Have paid my money for training in Denver on the 14th of August looking forward to the class hope to see some other HI’s there.
I have a couple of horses with problems and am going to shoot some pics of them and take it to my vet and see if I can not market to them.
Jeff P you might as well come on to denver would enjoy meeting you. We could really stir things up.
I’ll be taking the Building Science course in Fremont CA. I had originally signed up for the Level 1 Certification, before I realized the differences in the courses.
The view is certainly limited, but I can fit the whole house into the screen while standing in the street out front. When you’re doing the interior however, you’ll need to scan the room.
I’ve heard pro’s and con’s for both the wide angle and the standard cams. Contact your local rep and they’ll set you up with a demonstration, so you can “test-drive” every model they have.
I’m all booked up for those dates. I’ll be in the sun on a lake, Aug 13 through the 20th. . . 
Well it was just a thought if you are going to be in the sun be sure to wear a hat your Pic does not show much protection on top:
This is the FLIR/ITC facility in Billerica, MA.
I stitched two photos (that I never intended to put together when I took them) using the auto settings in HP Image Zone (is on the utility disk of some HP Printers). Not Bad.
Second pic is five photos that were not cleaned up or fine tuned, but you get the capabilities of the program.
For those of you that do not need the $2k program that FLIR offers, this is the best, fastest and most accurate I have seen besides what Flir offers. It will not keep the Radiometric information of the scan, but will give you a good digital picture to put in the report.
For those that are trying to capture the entire house in one shot, this drastically reduces the camera resolution. Put your business card on the side of the next house and take a picture with your digital (which is thousands times the resolution of the best of IR Cameras) in wide angle or from across the street and see if you can read it. Distance also effects the apparent temperature your camera registers. Stitching four photos in a scan will give you 400% resolution of your camera.
Using the computer software that comes with your camera (and others)makes your camera more powerful than your camera can do alone, so take it out and learn it. Spending an extra $10k on another level camera is a waste of money if you try to do everything through the camera alone.
For those on their way to class, I recommend that you get your camera out and scan (and bring to class) everything you can think of, not just HI. As you progress through the class, the pic’s you took yourself (you know the conditions and the object in the scan) will take on new meaning. The ones you look at in class lack the conditions and background knowledge compared to the ones you took.