FLIR Thermal Survey of House.

Late last year on a cold dry night did a FLIR E4 survey of my house. Will not include the photos. A google image search for FLIR will get stuff much more interesting visually than I could present. Some online FLIR images even tend toward art.

Issues found:
- Massive kitchen heatleak. Wall too thin behind radiator. Unfortunately no gap whatsoever into which to insert a batt of Spaceloft.  Thinking about a tiny under window greenhouse or exterior adhoc insulation.
- Big heat leak on inner corner of front porch where radiator pipes go to second floor. Insulation has probabbly fallen down around pipe. Unfortunately hard to get to. Again thinking about something adhoc on exterior. Looking at ComfortBatt wrapped in Tyvek.
- Exposed basement cinderblock wall. Thought our 12" thick basement blocks (with air core) would do fairly well. But the whole thing is uniformly warm. Considering stryofoam rigid panels - dig down to allow 2' height, UV protect with thin water and vermin resistant sheathing (maybe Tyvek again), regrade... will have to wait until snow gone, and ground thaws.

Places I thought there would be leaks - but there were none:
- Basement sills - suprisingly tight.
- Basement windows - had installed secondary glazing on most.
- Upstairs windows - have storm windows and they seem to do a good job.
- Attic floor - thought the rockwool had been distrubed to thin here and there, but good overall.

FLIR is about to update the FLIRONE .
And it addresses a couple of big issues with first version
A. Any device with Lightning or Andoid micro USB.
B. Consolidated App for everything.

Micro management of your lawn becomes a real possibility. See my previous post on Big Data in Agriculture. Here is something a bit "farther out" from NASA. And a bit more down to earth from IsraelAgri.

Cutting Styrofoam

Wanted to cut inch thick (pink/blue) styrofoam insulation sheets. Considered hot knives/wire, but they are tricky to wield, generate odor/fumes, have small chance of burns, and often generate less than straight lines (like a jigsaw in wood). Some suggest using a fine saw blade (like from a hacksaw), but that generates a foam dust mess. Some suggest scoring and snapping (with varying degrees of sucess in getting a good clean edge), but scoring and snapping only works well for straight cuts. Arcs and curves are hard to score and snap.

Read about using a serrated knife coated with wax to cut styrofoam. Was skeptical. Was very skeptical after prurchasing an old beatup knife (Goodwill) and rubbing beeswax (A.C.Moore lifetime supply one pound block) on it. Knife looked a mess, with varying thicknesses of wax gooped all over the blade. Beeswax is not very fluid/smooth at room temperature.

Seemed like wax would do more to make the styrofoam chip and gouge, than help make a clean cut, but wax-on-serrated-knife worked like a charm. The starting carving stroke generates friction, but the serrated blade makes a initial clean cut. The side friction warms up the blade and starts the wax flowing and every stroke after warm up is superb. It is almost like cutting a stick of cold butter. Would not have believed it.

Caveat is that working too fast and cutting too far (say about a metre) completely cleans the wax off the working area of the blade. One must regularly get out the wax block/candle and coat the blade again. But that is a small price to pay for a clean cut (straight or curved).