Building Thermal Indexing

Thermal Indexing formulae is designed as a tool to enable thermographers to test the fabric of a building at the time of the inspection and relate either internal and external surface temperatures together or internal and external ambient temperatures depending on whether or not the inspection is conducting outside or inside. It also uses a critical temperature factor which is a value associated with mould growth and other building related problems. The critical temperature factor varies on external surveys due to compensation required for external boundary resistance layer variation but for internal inspections it is a solid value unless the environment is particularly humid like swimming pools. The formulae indicates internal and external threshold temperatures which can then be assigned to the thermograms with the use of isotherms set either above or below depending on inspection perspective, internal or external.

These formulae are built into some thermal imaging building cameras as standard and now we have utilised the formulae and included them in our TICOR™ building module to help thermographers to identify and grade problems automatically. TICOR™ suggests thermographers use unencumbered images without isotherms for all building elevations and then if a fault is found, include the thermograms with the isotherms where these threshold temperatures have been breached.