Irtc Infrared Thermal Consultants - Products
Infrared Roof Surveys
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Roof moisture detection
A well prepared, graphic and accurate map of the infrared signatures of a roof can be of tremendous benefit to a building roof owner at all stages of the roof’s limited life. Knowing where the subsurface moisture is located will help the roof owner manage his assets. This form of predictive maintenance works well on many types of flat and low slope roofs. Here are the basics: At night, areas of roof moisture are warmer, because the accumulated heat (from daylight sunshine and heat) in the trapped water mass is greater than in the dry, functioning insulation or roof substrate. After sunset, as the roof’s structure cools down, the wet areas of roof insulation and other materials maintain higher temperatures because of their higher mass, allowing the infrared cameras to detect the sources of heat and record them for later analysis. There are two ways to perform IR roof moisture surveys: on-roof and aerial. On-roof thermographers walk from roof to roof looking for subsurface moisture patterns and when found, mark the extremities of these areas on the roof with paint. Aerial IR is used when the owner wants to document the wet areas with straight-down photos. The biggest advantage of aerial infrared is not its use on roofs that have well-defined areas of moisture at all, but those roofs that are the most difficult to image from any distance or angle. I am referring to the roofs that, for instance, have a lot of ballast, are covered with reflective coatings or ones that for whatever reason are impossible to image from the roof. With high resolution aerial imagery, slight nuances of temperature can be seen from far enough away to recognize the pattern of heat.