digital thermography?
 

A friend of mine is considering starting a part-time company doing digital thermography looking for heat loss, water leaks etc... etc...

There doesn't seem to be anyone else in the business locally, and he has contacts in the insurance, construction & renovation businesses.

Does anyone here work with this technology? More specifically, does anyone here make a living solely off digital thermography? If so, what are your experiences? Where is the "meat" of the business, residential or commercial? Insurance? How do you bill... hourly, flat rate for services?

Any feedback would be greatly appreciated!

Anyone?

No one using digital thermography cameras to do energy audits?

Maybe there's more market for digital thermopornography? :D

Yup - We do it all the time for case studies on the temp reduction on pumps, bearings, motors and gearboxes. Check out www.flirthermography.com The company, FLIR is the major player. They have pretty cool systems. An intro unit can be around $6000 and they go all the way to $45,000. Keep in mind that the high price means better resolution. A typical inspection can take 30 minutes and you can charge $250 to $500. If you do it at a plant, a typical fee is $1000 to $2000 depending on the reslution and they accuracy and thouroughness of the report you write. FLIR can set you up as a small business but you gotta buy a unit.

I attended a training session a few weeks ago for the FLIR units. It was held at a hotel conference room. Took the high end model into the lobby with the rep and shot it at a few hotties. The resoultion was so good you could tell what style underwear they were wearing!

Emerson Power CSI also has a line but they are more into vibration analysis.

Re: digital thermography?
 

I considered doing the same thing. Depending on how hard you are willing to work and how accurate your reports were, a man could make a very very good living being a Thermoanalysist.

I'm looking to start a business group in my company that would do this for customers in manufacturing facilities.

Profitable? at $1000 to $2000 a throw, after you bleed out the capital costs and training/software, what do you think....

Re: Re: digital thermography?
 

Exactly. He's already had the training and is comfortable with the technology & software. He's also does analysis & reports based on the images.

His line of thinking is to start with a med-high end camera for about 25k, and focus initially on residential energy audits. These are best done at night anyway, so he could start out doing this as a sideline until he had things ramped up.

We use it all the time to check for overheated feeders, circuit breakers, fuses, etc. I do a thermal survey of all electrical panels , service feeds, motors and the like once a year. It will show any excesive resistance in a connection. We use a Flir camera which shows thermal differences in color and a digital readout.

You can't just throw out a statement like that without pictures...

We also have thermal imaging cameras in my fire dept. We would never, ever use them for something like that!!:rolleyes: :p

Be interesting to take one into a bar around closing - scan the mid-drifts of the honeys and see what pops up as a "hot spot". Be great if you could miniaturize it so they gave a read onto your glasses and was undetectable.

Re: Re: Re: digital thermography?
 

Pretty much a no brainer then. It is one thing to do the read, what about a soultion? Has he hooked up with a contracot base thet he can refer bidness to? That way he can get a spiff from them as well.

Re: Re: Re: Re: digital thermography?
 

Yup, he's hooked up in the local renovation circles, he used to work in that field with a very reputable contractor. Starting to sound like a viable business.

Nice thing is that once you get the camera & software, there doesn't seem to be any other overhead.

The obstacle I see is starting p/t at night. You'd need someone knowledgeable to field calls and make appointments during regular business hours.

It looks like we have a few people that use DT in their particular fields, but no one that specializes in. Anyone else hire this work out, and if so, what do you pay?

Anyone in the insurance biz use DT to assess damage?

He could balence out his business by doing 50% residential and 50% industrial - heck I bet it could even come in handy if you brought it with you deer hunting!

Sort of like a "Heads-Up" display!:D