Message Board Thread - "emissivity values on a building survey"

Title	By	Posted On
emissivity values on a building survey	dryfix	11/30/2009
Firstly my appologies if this questions seems a little stuipd to you pro's. I am new to thermography and just bought my first camera to help expand our building companies surveying techniques. As i understand different materials have different emissivity values and when using the camera in order to achieve an accurate apparent tempertaure reading or delta T the correct emissivity value of that material must be used. my question is: if i am using my camera to scan the internal surfaces of a building for potential water leaks etc, there are many materials used in its construction. considering the fact i am in theory scanning multiple surfaces all with different emissivity values; how can i be sure my temperature readings are accurate? without scanning and altering the parameters of each surface first? Regards Russell
Re:emissivity values on a building survey	qhinspect	12/5/2009
Russell, If you are just scanning for moisture intrusion, insulation missing etc. you do not have to worry to much what your emissivity settings are. Set it at 1.0 and others viewing your images will know that you are not trying to do a quantitative survey.(if they have training) Since you are not doing a quantitative survey remove the temp scale by cropping your images before you put them in a report. You are looking for thermal patterns in your images not the actual temperature.