What’s behind your walls? What you don’t see can hurt your home — but a simple and inexpensive service could be just the tool for peaking into the hidden recesses of your biggest investment.
Thermal imaging technology — taking pictures of objects with a special camera which sees minute variations in temperature and displays them in a corresponding colour scheme — has been around for decades but has only recently become affordable for the residential market.
“These cameras used to cost tens of thousands of dollars,” says Toronto electrical engineer turned thermal imaging specialist Gabriel Gal. “Even more recently, they were $10,000 but now you can get them for around $2,500.”
But for homeowners, it also means that for between $200 and $300, depending on the size of your house and how detailed a report you need, services like Gal’s Atlantis Thermal Imaging can identify issues such as faulty wiring, termite damage, uneven insulation, air leaks, moisture or condensation penetration, and where your in-floor radiant heating system has sprung a leak or whether it was installed properly.
“Even in my own house, I’ve found things I didn’t know about,” he says. “I renovated and had a new roof put on but the water and ice shield wasn’t laid properly. I found where the ice had started to push under the shingles.”
For home buyers and builders alike, it’s a small investment and could pay for itself since a standard home inspection may not catch hidden issues.
“With energy costs today, people want to know if they have a problem,” he says. “If they feel ‘ghosts’ or drafts in their rooms, they want to know where that leak is coming from and a camera allows you to find those things.”
For home buyers, he says, a thermal imaging scan can find problems they can demand be fixed or reflected in a better price; for builders it’s a way to ensure their sub-trades have done their job.
“I’m a certified home inspector as well,” says Gal, who also builds houses through his company Atlantis Homes. “And even with my experience, you don’t always see everything. There are some 80,000 homes sold each year in the GTA and only 70 per cent are inspected. Even fewer are thermally scanned.”
While the thermal imaging can’t “see” mould, for example, it can see moisture which shows up as a different temperature.
“It feeds on paper and the sugars in wood,” he said. “We can see the moisture which usually means mould, too.”
As a custom home builder, Gal knows the value of thermal imaging — and so does Claude Spethmann, who is also a custom builder
“We’ve had problems in the past with radiant floor heating which we put oak flooring over,” says Spethmann of Spethmann Works Ltd. “Sometimes they (the sub-trades) nail right through the pipes and cause a leak, which causes all kinds of problems.”
He hired Gal to image the floor to ensure there were no leaks.
“You energize the heating system and before it really heats up you can clearly see the lines,” Gal says. “If there’s a leak, you’ll see it start to pool.”
In other inspections, Spethmann was able to see insulation was not installed properly and was able to address the problem before turning the finished home over to his clients. “These are custom homes and people expect a level of quality,” he said.
Any tool that gives buyers an insight is invaluable, says realtor Don Gault of Royal LePage/Johnston & Daniel.
While a good home inspector is worth every penny, it can be hit or miss depending on the inspector’s skills and level of experience.
“I take my own advice,” he says. “With imaging, you can see things the naked eye would miss. It can also confirm suspicions.”
Home inspectors aren’t allowed to drill into walls or pull things apart to investigate forensically, he notes, but the thermal imaging can get to the heart of things.
“Nothing takes the shine off a new home purchase like discovering something you wish you’d known about before the offer. It’s rare, mercifully, but I wouldn’t buy from the older housing stock in Toronto without this kind of investigation.”
