Rain penetrating into building walls due to poor insulation, cracked bricks, loose masonry, or deteriorated pointing is usually difficult to detect until it’s too late, which might cause damp patches, discoloration, and peeling of paintwork and moss growth on the interior wall. In addition, poor water tightness may result in conditioned air escape, increased heat loss, and frost damage.
A thermal camera can quickly identify moisture that has entered behind walls, as well as missing insulation and faulty construction that allow water and air infiltration.
Water causes only slight temperature differences and building exterior walls are usually far from the inspector, which requires a thermal camera with great thermal sensitivity, resolution, and telephoto lens. With brilliant sensitivity of 40mK and resolution up to 384x288, FOTRIC 320 series thermal imagers can reveal substantial temperature details from a distance. FOTRIC cameras can locate precisely areas with trapped water and damaged sealing by temperature differences.
Among the common substances, water has the highest specific heat capacity, meaning wet materials take longer to both cool down and warm up. So damp areas in the wall store the warmth from the sun for longer than intact areas, meaning the wall structure cools unevenly in the evening.