Saving heat special on London Tonight

[Outtasight]

Looaacal TV only but pretty good.

They talked about how utilities are raking it in and what you can do about it.

They drove up and down some streets with a thermal camera to point out how old and some new houses leak heat like a sieve!  Then they took one household and looked at it in more depth, showing where the heat was escaping from the walls (especially the external walls with radiators behind) and showed putting loft and wall insulation in and draught excluders and radiator reflectors in.  Another thermal image scan then showed how the house has been improved.

They also put in a smart meter with a remote power monitor and the family were able to reduce power consumption by 20% over a week.

As an extreme, they showed off a Victorian house that has been rebuilt by an architect who installed PV and solar water heating, OTT insulation, triple glazing and so on and his fuel bills average out at zero over the year.

[ecogeorge]

Not that local - watched it in Forest of Dean -Glos!

[martin]

And Meridian!

[KenB]

Is Ivan still doing thermal surveys?

I know mine leaks heat from the radiators against the outside walls.  It is an old wives tale that the best place for the radiators is under the windows. (That should ignite a few people ;-) )

The police use thermal imaging cameras to spot cannabis farms from the air.  The haven't found my hot engine shed yet.


Ken

[Hugo]

I only managed to watch the last ten minutes, pity as I don't think it will be on again.

[martin]

http://www.itv.com/itvplayer/video/?Filter=124116

[RichardKB]

Is Ivan still doing thermal surveys?

I know mine leaks heat from the radiators against the outside walls.  It is an old wives tale that the best place for the radiators is under the windows. (That should ignite a few people ;-) )

The police use thermal imaging cameras to spot cannabis farms from the air.  The haven't found my hot engine shed yet.


Ken

Certainly not under a window without any insulation behind it. .

Rich

[Rooster]

Another thermal image scan then showed how the house has been improved.

I was rather sceptical about the before and after thermal images.

They had insulated the cavity and added more insulation in the loft yet in the 'after' image the windows appeared much to be performing much better. The windows in the before image were glowing bright yet in the after image they were a much more subdued blue/green.

I suspect that there was something different between the images other than the loft and cavity insulation! A different setting on the colour scale or perhaps the house was cold with no heating for the second image?

Something didn't seem quite right to me!

[langstroth2]

Yep, saw that programme aswell. I was just surprised that clearly intelligent people were prepared to pay such large amounts on gas & elec without thinking "may be I could do something about this".

...  on second thoughts thinking about it, that was me a few years ago until I "woke up" to what was happening to our fuel bills.

[cirrusvfr]

   Surely, when you compare Thermal Image images you have to replicate the same conditions ........... eg. Ambient temp, Inside temp, same number of people in house  , same time of day , same amount of heating etc, etc.............otherwise these comparisons are worthless

[davebodger]

   Surely, when you compare Thermal Image images you have to replicate the same conditions ........... eg. Ambient temp, Inside temp, same number of people in house  , same time of day , same amount of heating etc, etc.............otherwise these comparisons are worthless

Yes, quite, but replicating conditions on the outside of houses is difficult to do.
I did notice the scale (down the right-hand side of the FLIR screen) had different start and end values.
I think they show the hottest temp as white at the top and coldest as blue/black at the bottom, with the scale in between being relative to the start and end temps.
This makes them difficult to interpret by just looking at the colours.
Sometimes a particular colour can be tens of degrees different between one picture and the next if the focus / average temperature point is moved.

[Outtasight]

Unless you're gonna do the experiment with a house in a temperature controlled greenhouse or something, you're never gonna get the same conditions two days in a row (and especially when the house was re-tested days later after they installed all the insulation...).

It wouldn't have had the same "OMG!  We need to do the same as they did - right now!" impact if they'd had to keep detailed meter readings and weather data for their street for a few years before and after the experiment to get a weather compensated average net saving figure on heat loss...