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The Boys Be Musing About Infrared Technology


Scottpat

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I have to agree with Chris' comment about the IR not finding something he would eventually find. I consult the pest control industry with our IR camera and you cannot just hand an camera to anyone expect them to know what they are looking at. You still have to have knowledge as an inspector for any IR camera to be effective. It's like giving an average guy and incredible set of golf clubs, it will not make him Tiger Woods.

What a good IR camera will do is make you more efficient and also allow you to better illustrate to your client what you are seeing and the extent or severity of the problem. For me time is money and when I can do an inspection in half the time and just as thorough for the same amount of money, well that just money in the bank.

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Originally posted by Asylum

. . . For me time is money and when I can do an inspection in half the time and just as thorough for the same amount of money, well that just money in the bank.

Well, actually, according to your equation, it's time in the bank.

So please explain how using IR can cut your inspection time in half.

- Jim Katen, Oregon

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My inspection time has actually gone up. I will admit that I was getting thru a typical inspection, without no talking, in a little over two hours.

Since I have been using the IR cam my time has been around 3 hours, without no talking. It's not because scanning with the IR cam is taking up more time. It's because as a result of using IR I am being more careful and using my moisture meters a lot more checking, investigating, considering and learning as much as possible as I go.

I don't think that my time on site will drop back to where it was.

Chris, Oregon

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Musing further I will add that using an IR cam can only increase your on site time. I think the use of any tool tends to do this in what we do. Instead of shortening the inspection the tools help us find more things that almost always requires more time verifying their validity and importance. How does that shorten the inspection?

I am looking forward to Jim Katens upcoming article on tools. There's a lot of visual means visual folks out there who say you got to hide your use of tools from the client and I love to destroy that premise as completely illogical and faulty muddled thinking.

Chris, Oregon

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Originally posted by kurt

It's one of my fears of IR. Another hour to the gig.

That's why I like the idea of IR being an entirely separate service, which unfortuneately, I don't think it will be.

Same here. Right now, it takes me, pretty consistently, 4 hours to inspect the house and write the report and another hour to discuss it with the customer. That's about as much time as I can afford to spend at an inspection. If I were to add another 30-60 minutes of IR-ing the house, I'd need to quit writing the report on site in order to keep under my 5 hour time limit. And that would mean typeing into the night. . .

- Jim Katen, Oregon

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We gotta come up w/something different, or we're all gonna go bankrupt.

Ain't that the truth. I have always marveled at how much work is accomplished per inspection. At the corporate level that same work would be days to a week to get accomplished and still be of less quality.

Let's say that IR cams drop in price tomarrow to the price of a moisture meter, if you knew it was going to increase your inspection time significantly but in return the quality and satisfaction would increase leading to more referrals would you employ IR or not?

What happens when the next technology that significantly aids us in performing a visual inspection comes out, are we going to be having this discussion all over again?

Will the use of powerful tools doom us on a path to performing some degree of quantitative analysis to uncover problems as some fear?

I think the camel already has his shoulders in the tent where it comes to the use of tools in the context of a visual inspection. There's probably no going back. What I would like to see is more education in the use of the tools that we already have.

I have seen very little education on the use of moisture meters? I use to hear, and sometimes still do, stories about erroneous conclusion some inspectors make with them. The same stories we hear about IR use.

Lately, I have seen that the inspector mills are cranking more wannebees out then ever judging by their attendance at local chapter meetings. Whats more harmful to our industry these companys that promise the moon when they absolutely know better or a few HI's running around with tools without adequate education and training in their use?

It's all a big problem. If I was dictator the first thing I would change is how these inspector mills do business.

Maybe force them to put a warning on the package: Warning it usually takes someone three years under the best circumstances to generate enough biz to eat, all the while under the constant threat of having everything taken from you. If you were to survive that long, understand that being a successful inspector is akin to swimming with piranha and sharks.

Chris, Oregon

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There's not a lot of problems. There's a single problem.

Folks don't charge enough. They let the realtors and their dipsquat schools tell them what to charge.

All the morons that couldn't handle their remodeling business because they didn't know what to charge are migrating to home inspection where they still don't know what to charge.

I'll be getting IR. And I'll just have to deal w/the morons.

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A comment and a (rhetorical) question.

We need to stop calling what we do a "visual" inspection. It may have been a visual inspection at one time, but the standard of care that is routinely set by many inspectors goes beyond being a visual inspection.

I'll use the moisture meter as an example since we are all familiar with its use. If I see something that looks like a water stain or some other sign of a current or past moisture problem, or even a bad flashing job on a roof, and then I use the moisture meter as a tool to provide more information to me about the thing that I observed, then I think we are still in the realm of doing a visual inspection. But if I start routinely scanning the walls below windows or the floor around toilets in the bathroom, because this is where I find a lot of leaks at houses I inspect and not because I observed something at this house that lead me to believe there may be moisture present in these locations at this home, then I'm no longer doing a visual inspection.

Here's another example. When I open up an electrical panel and report my findings, I'm doing a visual inspection. When I stick a three light tester into a receptacle and report my findings, I'm not doing a visual inspection on this portion of the electrical system. If, instead of using the tester, I remove the cover plate and report on how the receptacle is wired, I'm doing a visual inspection. In this case, the cost of the tool is cheap and it speeds up my inspection process, because I can use the tester to decide which cover plates I want to pull for a visual inspection, instead of pulling every one of them or relying on a "representative sample".

With an IR camera, I see two different ways of using it in HI work. The first way is that you see something, such as a water stain, with your eyes. You pull out your IR camera and you find a "thermal anomaly" around the stain. You pull out your moisture meter and scan around the stain and confirm that the thermal anomaly is due to moisture. You use the IR pic to communicate to your client information about the location and extent of the leak. You could switch the order of grabbing the camera or the moisture meter; I don't think it matters because each tool is being used to provide you with more info about what you originally observed with your eyes. In this case, the cost of the tool is large and time added to the inspection is small.

The other way is to use the IR camera as a primary inspection and diagnostic tool, much the same as using the three light receptacle tester or the moisture meter to scan areas of the home that have no visible signs of moisture. In this case the IR camera is being used as a tool to find problems that you cannot normally see with your eyes during the course of a typical home inspection, or maybe, as in the case with the three-light tester you use it to help you more quickly zero in on areas that you want to conduct a more thorough visual examination. You are using the camera to hunt for thermal anomalies and then conducting further investigations to nail down their cause.

Now for the question. You make a considerable investment in money and time to add and learn how to properly use a new tool (IR camera) in your routine inspection business. Using this tool adds a significant amount of your time to each inspection. It adds considerable value to your inspection for your client. Why give all of that away for free?

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Here's another example. When I open up an electrical panel and report my findings, I'm doing a visual inspection. When I stick a three light tester into a receptacle and report my findings, I'm not doing a visual inspection on this portion of the electrical system

Yes you are. Let me explain why. Did you do any measuring? Did you record data and then put it in a formula and make a calculation to arrive at your conclusion? No, that would be performing a quantitative analysis, something that we tell the client we are not going to do for them. IOW, we are not going to perform a quantitative analysis to attempt to find issues that can't be found via qualitative observations.

Now if I tell you an engineer, that what I am going to do is find problems based on qualitative observations and not quantitative analysis you probably would understand what I mean, but no one else would.

Maybe Les can tell us how the founding forefathers envisioned the use of the word.

Now for the question. You make a considerable investment in money and time to add and learn how to properly use a new tool (IR camera) in your routine inspection business. Using this tool adds a significant amount of your time to each inspection. It adds considerable value to your inspection for your client. Why give all of that away for free?

Supply and demand, my brother.

Uh, now, can anyone tell me where Katens at? I heard he just got on a plane to Mexico.[:-wiltel]

Chris, Oregon

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I understand where you are going with the qualitative vs quantitative thing. I think your logic breaks down somewhere between the tester being "not quantitative" (with which I agree) and then from this you draw the conclusion that it is a "visual inspection" of the receptacle wiring (with which I do not agree).

The standard of care that is routinely set by many inspectors goes not only beyond being a visual inspection, but it also frequently crosses that line between qualitative and quantitative. Ever use a tape measure to actually measure something before calling it out as a defect?

My point with all this is that home inspections have evolved into something more than a "visual inspection" and they involve some degree of quantitative analysis. What that thing should be called, I really don't know.

Originally posted by Chris Bernhardt

Now for the question. You make a considerable investment in money and time to add and learn how to properly use a new tool (IR camera) in your routine inspection business. Using this tool adds a significant amount of your time to each inspection. It adds considerable value to your inspection for your client. Why give all of that away for free?

Supply and demand, my brother.

Uh, now, can anyone tell me where Katens at? I heard he just got on a plane to Mexico.[:-wiltel]

Chris, Oregon

There is an endless supply of new home inspectors pricing their services below the level which is necessary for them to remain viable as a business. There is certainly a demand for home inspections at that price. Neither the supplier nor the purchaser of those services may be making a wise decision.

That we see the same thing now happening with IR is probably the biggest reason why I don't already own an IR camera. At this point in time I can't justify a capital outlay of that size when there are guys springing up that are willing to give that capital, and the value of their own time (because as you and others have observed the IR cam adds a significant amount of time to your inspection process), away for free.

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When I first started inspecting the guys I did my ride alongs with did visual only. No tools except for a screw driver, ladder, flashlight and a three light tester.

Now I can't imagine doing an inspection without moisture meters and an IR cam. Heck, I even have a 60' pipe and duct camera that I use on occasion.

I would miss so much stuff without these tools that I use as indicators.

Any suggestions on how to describe inspections that are beyond just visual but less than a quantitative analysis?

Some guys layout the argument that if you use tools, you open yourself up to lots of liability. It sounds like a theory to me. My experience has been just the opposite; they in effect reduce my liability.

Chris, Oregon

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Originally posted by Chris Bernhardt

Some guys layout the argument that if you use tools, you open yourself up to lots of liability. It sounds like a theory to me. My experience has been just the opposite; they in effect reduce my liability.

Chris, Oregon

Somebody told them that, and they believed it. It's passed into one of the more flogged bits of folklore there is.

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Hi,

I think if you aren't using tools in this business you are limiting your ability to learn as much as you can about houses. Over the past six years, I've:

- Pulled a blower drum out of an air handler in order to be able to look up into a heat exchanger.

- Opened up "A" coil cabinets on systems to be able to examine their condition and examine how they're put together.

- Disassembled the housings on about six different types of boilers in order to see what makes them tick.

- Taken down ceiling panels and crawled through ceiling plenums in order to get to and examine heat pumps in skyscrapers.

- Opened lots of screwed-on access covers in order to examine hidden plumbing, electrical, and hydro-massage tub components.

- Opened dozens of in-wall electrical and/or hydronic heaters to examine their connections and see how they worked.

- Cut into walls, with the permission of homeowners, to investigate moisture in walls.

- Removed one or two pieces of siding, with the pemission of homeowners, to investigate pest issues.

- Had clients give save me replaced components so that I could study issues seen and understand what caused them.

- Other stuff

If I can do it within the time I've alloted myself for the inspection, without damaging whatever it is and without significantly adding to my usual time on site or the time it takes me to compile a report, I do it.

Home inspectors can't learn everything from books and message boards; you have to get your hands dirty and understand how stuff works. If you don't want to do it on a customer's house during an inspection, do it on your own, and your relatives', and your friends, etc..

ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!!

Mike

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Any suggestions on how to describe inspections that are beyond just visual but less than a quantitative analysis?
I'm leaning toward noninvasive or nondestructive. Noninvasive has a good parallel to the medical field, and I think more and more people are becoming familiar with that term and have an intuitive grasp of what it means -- to examine without breaking the skin or penetrating a body cavity. Nondestructive is similar but not quite the same, and comes from the engineering world.

When you go to the doctor, the doctor wants to learn as much as possible about you without causing damage to your body. The doctor runs you through a battery of noninvasive tests and examinations: looks you over, pokes and probes, measures your temperature and weight, listens to your heart and breathing, measures your pulse and blood pressure, looks in your ears and throat, checks your vision, tests your reflexes, etc. Beyond that there are a whole host of noninvasive diagnostic tools available for use: x-ray, ECG/EKG, MRI, radiology, ultrasound, and yes, infrared imaging. The doctor might order some minimally invasive tests such as drawing blood, a biopsy, or even a colonoscopy -- although those who have had that last one might disagree that it is "minimally invasive"! Thankfully, technology has pushed "let's grab the scalpel and see what's going on in there" way down the list!

Over in the engineering world, many of those same techniques and technologies are being used on physical objects in a process called NDE or nondestructive evaluation. NDE refers to methods used to examine and evaluate an object, material or system without impairing its future usefulness. A small amount of damage is permissible as long as the usefulness is maintained.

A house is a bunch of objects and materials that are assembled into various systems. I think nondestructive is better than noninvasive as a description of the kind of inspection that HIs do. It's that "examination without impairing future usefulness" part that is the key. Using a pin-type moisture meter, probing for wood damage, or dismantling equipment in order to get a better look are all invasive methods but they are still considered nondestructive techniques.

When I am working to define and shape the client's expectations of the inspection, I don't say "I'm going to do a limited visual inspection of the readily accessible areas of the home". I say "I'm going to spend several hours here trying to find out everything I can about the condition of this home without damaging it." Then I'll mention some of the things that might limit my inspection (e.g., not visible, not accessible, not safe).

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Originally posted by Jim Katen

Originally posted by Asylum

. . . For me time is money and when I can do an inspection in half the time and just as thorough for the same amount of money, well that just money in the bank.

Well, actually, according to your equation, it's time in the bank.

So please explain how using IR can cut your inspection time in half.

- Jim Katen, Oregon

I do mainly pest inspections but because I am in Florida around hurricane season I also get my share of water intrusion calls.

I am still a pest inspector, before I ever had an IR camera so I do not take out the camera an attempt to scan the whole house. I carry on with my regular means of inspection and use the camera and moisture meter to dispel signs of termite or pest activity.

I do not think that your home inspection should change because you have a IR camera but rather you use it when you have a suspicious area and want to do some non-invasive dissection.

I also have several years of construction background therefore I know where things should be and where they shouldn't. I use my camera to look at the anomalies that should not be there and rely on my experience to find out why.

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