Loaner Thermal Cameras

Find out where your home is losing heat with a Loaner Thermal Camera

Thermal cameras are an easy & free way to find out where your home is losing heat. Once you know, you can make easy, affordable & quick DIY fixes to keep the heat in and cold air out.

Just check out a thermal camera from your local Grand County library, as part of the "Home Sustainability Kit". Search in the catalog for "thermal cameras" or "home sustainability kit" www.gcld.org

How to check your home with the thermal camera

Check all over your home to see which places are colder than others. The screen shows red / yellow for warm areas and blue / green for cold areas, so you can see where heat is escaping.

Common places where cold air leaks into the home are:

- Electrical outlets and light switches on exterior walls
- Around exterior doors and windows
- Attic access hatches
- Recessed lights and light fixture boxes in the attic
- Unfinished basements

With an outdoor temp under 32 degrees, look for temperature differences greater than 10 degrees. So if your room temp is 65 and the outlet is 52 degrees, cold air is leaking into your home & is a problem worth solving.

Windows will always look cold because glass is not a good insulator. Look for even colder blue cold spots coming from the edge of the window or door where air could enter.

Use caulk, foam, weather-stripping and insulation to stop the air from entering.

Corners in your home will also look cold because two pieces of wood are coming together without insulation. Nothing can be done.

Simple Weatherization tips to help your stop heat escaping from your home

Remove plate & caulk around outlets & light switches on exterior walls.

Seal gaps around doors & windows with weather stripping.

Add extra insulation to your attic & attic access hatch

Instructions for using the HF96 Thermal Camera

Make sure the camera is charged before starting your work. A charging cable is included in the box. Charging port is on top of the camera.
Press the power button (far left) to turn on the camera.
Once turned on, you should see an image. There are 6 thermal color palette options and we recommend ‘rainbow’.
If the palette is not set at ‘rainbow’, simply press the up/down arrow until you get that option.
The right side of the screen will show the hottest and coldest temps within the view, and the upper left will provide a temperature reading at the center marker. The colors are very helpful for finding obvious differences, but the actual temperatures are the most important.
If you were looking at a warm object at 90 degrees F, it would be red, while the surfaces around it at 75 degrees might be blue. In a separate view, an object at 75 degrees might be red, while a nearby surface at 50 degrees is blue. You can see that these colors are only in relation to the objects in view.
Clicking the trigger button will capture the image on the screen, which can later be transferred to your computer via the USB charging cable. This is not a necessary step in the process. We recommend marking the problem areas with painters tape, taking notes or fixing issues as you find them.
When finished, simply hold down the power button to turn off the camera.