In recent years, thermal imaging has become a powerful tool in the arsenal of many professional home inspectors. However, thermal imaging has its limitations.
As you may know, there are just a few primary uses of thermal imaging. When you boil it all down, thermal imaging can tell you where things are hot, where things are cold, and where things are moist. While this is important information, it will only get you so far. Seeing the image from an infrared camera is very similar to seeing the image from an x-ray. You need to know what you’re looking at in order for the image to be useful. With an x-ray, you’d get advice from a doctor. With thermal imaging, you can get advice from a home inspector. A well-trained home inspector can look at thermal imaging and quickly identify where there are probable issues. Having experience with many common property issues can be invaluable to providing a good interpretation of thermal imaging data.
