Building Performance Architecture

Hey Friends! Happy !

Check out these photos showing one method of confirming moisture in building assemblies after seeing something suspicious with the IR camera. The moisture meter detected approximately 15.8% moisture at the cool spot, and a much lower 8.6% moisture at the location with temperature the same as the rest of the wall.

15% moisture as detected by the Tramex CMEX-5 on the "Douglas Fir" setting is not an immediately-actionable level, but it is something. Now, the difficult part is deciphering where the moisture may be coming from, and whether any further investigation or repair is warranted.

Given that this space is a hot tub room (covers on the tubs), with an insulated wood stud wall and stucco exterior finish, what are your thoughts on this situation?

And what other interesting things do you see in these thermograms?

Air Barrier Association of America Kentucky Thermal Institute Teledyne FLIR

Hey, friends! Happy !

Here are some super-dynamic indoor thermograms from a large building, showing a number of things:

A. Stratification of temperature between lower and upper parts of the walls. What do you think is causing this? Maybe this is an HVAC question...

B. Air leakage through the closed and locked aluminum slider window. What are the possible air leakage paths?

C. The little cold spots at the top corners of the room are actually exposed structural steel plates sticking out past the indoor wall/ceiling finishes. No insulation between outdoors and the steel surface indoors. What are the possible consequences of this condition?

It's also interesting to see how this scene looks with different color palettes. The rainbow high contrast and arctic palettes really emphasize the temperature stratification on the wall. They also make the depth of different surfaces "pop." The ironbow and grayscale color palettes make the air leakage from the window look more like streaks, the classic IR signature of air leakage.

What are your thoughts on this, and what other interesting things do you see in these images?

Teledyne FLIR The Energy Conservatory Air Barrier Association of America TruTech Tools, LTD