Heat shows you what the eye cannot.
Wet insulation, failing electrical connections, missing insulation, dead solar panels. All of it gives itself away as temperature.
What a thermal camera is actually reading
Not moisture, and not a fault. Temperature. Everything infrared finds, it finds because the problem changes how something holds or sheds heat, and the skill is knowing which temperature differences mean something and which are just a roof being a roof.
Taking the image is the easy part. Reading it is the job, and it is why this work is done by certified thermographers rather than by whoever owns the camera.
Every thermographer on our staff is certified to at least Level II by the Infraspection Institute, and several hold Level III. That distinction is the one worth understanding before you hire anybody for this: Level I is trained to operate the camera. Level II is qualified to interpret what it shows and to work unsupervised. Since a thermal anomaly is not a finding until somebody competent says what it means, the certification level of the person on your roof is most of what you are buying.
Infrared roof moisture surveys
Roofs get condemned on a few interior stains and an estimate. A survey replaces that with a drawing of what is actually wet.
Why it works, and why it happens after dark
Through the day the roof absorbs solar gain. Anywhere the insulation is saturated has a far greater thermal capacity than the dry insulation around it, so it takes on more heat. After sunset the roof gives that heat back, and the dry areas cool quickly while the wet areas stay warm.
That lag is the whole survey. Scanned in the window after sunset, saturated areas stand out plainly against the dry roof around them. We mark them on the roof itself in paint or crayon, so the crew doing the repair is standing in the right place, and record every one for the report.
What it saves you
Wet insulation is not only a leak waiting to happen. It has stopped insulating, so you are heating and cooling the building against it every month. It shortens the life of everything around it, and it grows mould that becomes a bigger problem than the roof was.
But the number that matters is how much roof you do not have to replace. Finding that a fifth of an assembly is wet turns a tear-off into a sectional repair, and the survey costs a fraction of the difference between those two invoices.
Find the wet areas so you replace those and keep the rest. On a large roof that is the difference between a repair and a capital project.
Confirm the insulation went down dry and stayed dry through construction.
Find out what the roof is hiding while somebody else is still liable for it.
Know the condition of the roof before it becomes your roof.
Document the extent of water intrusion in a form an adjuster can read.
An independent, dated record of roof condition from a firm with nothing riding on the answer.
When infrared is the wrong tool, we say so
Start with what it is reading. A thermal camera does not see moisture, it sees temperature, and moisture is only one of the things that changes temperature on a roof. Rooftop equipment, warm penetrations and changes in insulation thickness all read as anomalies too. That is why ASTM C1153, the standard covering this work, requires anomalies to be verified rather than acted on.
Then the conditions. It needs real solar gain during the day, a decent day-to-night temperature swing, low wind, a dry surface, and no rain in the previous 24 hours. Ballast and pavers block it outright. And a bright reflective cool roof, which is what half of new construction now specifies, is engineered to shed exactly the solar gain the survey depends on, so it can hide moisture rather than reveal it.
So there are roofs, and there are nights, where infrared will not give you a trustworthy answer. A firm that owns only a thermal camera has two options: tell you to wait for conditions, or run it anyway and hand you unverified anomalies presented as findings.
We carry nuclear as well. It reads through surfaces infrared cannot see past, it works in daylight, and it does not care about the weather. So when we tell you which method your roof needs, nothing rides on the answer.
Infrared electrical inspections
Heat is the first symptom of a failing electrical connection, and it shows up long before anything trips.
Electrical gear runs warm. Overloaded or degrading gear runs hot, because resistance rises as a connection loosens, corrodes, or carries more than it should. Scanned under load with a calibrated imaging radiometer, that hot spot is obvious while it is still a maintenance item rather than a fire.
Every finding gets its measured temperature, the thermogram, a control photograph of the same equipment in visible light, and enough detail to act on. Nothing is opened and nothing is taken out of service. The scan happens with the system energised and working, which is the only condition under which the fault is visible at all.
Find the connection that is going to fail while it is still a repair. A catastrophic failure costs the equipment, the downtime, and sometimes the building.
Stop spending crew hours hunting for problems, or creating new ones by disturbing gear that was fine. A scan gives exact locations without touching anything.
Repairs move to a normal working day rather than a night, a weekend, or an overtime call-out after something has already gone.
Scanning new installations and fresh repairs regularly turns up connections already running hot and needing redoing. Worth catching while the contractor is still on site.
The rest of what infrared is good for
Real services, smaller share of the work. Usually added to a visit that was happening anyway, which is the economical way to buy them.
Missing, slumped or wet insulation in walls, and the air paths driving heating and cooling cost. Pairs naturally with air and vapor barrier testing.
Overheating bearings and couplings, failed steam traps, and blocked or leaking lines, found under load before they take the plant down.
Dead cells, failed bypass diodes and hot spots across an array. A panel that has stopped producing looks identical from the ground and obvious in thermal.
The same scan on a set interval, so you are comparing this year against last year rather than reading a single snapshot. Where infrared pays best.
What you get
For a roof survey: a marked plan with the wet and dry areas delineated and the boundaries drawn, in a form a roofer can price and an owner can understand. The areas marked on the roof itself as well as on paper.
For an electrical or mechanical scan: every finding with its thermal image, a matching visible-light photograph, the measured temperature and the location.
We only test. We do not replace roofs and we do not repair switchgear, so the report says what we found and stops there.