Home Fire Safety Using Thermal Imagers

We have seen, in the past few years, articles on the benefits of using thermal imagers in our own homes. The rising cost of fuel and electricity has brought energy efficiency to the forefront of all of our minds. Infrared thermal imagers can trace these losses and increase the efficiency of our homes reducing money out of our pockets. But did you know that thermal imagers can also help us to detect dangerous fire hazards before they result in damage and injury, saving money, and potentially lives? When electric circuits have an increased resistance and begin building up excess heat, the problem snowballs and becomes progressively worse. Added heat can mean higher temperatures in those components, which can increase the corrosion rate and the electric resistance of copper and aluminum. I knew from past utility and substation experience that just because we couldn't see the problem didn't mean that it didn't exist. Thermal imagers allow us to detect what we would miss with the naked eye. Using the information from the images taken by our thermal imager, the electrician performed the work and then re-energized the circuit.