Thermography: Detecting Hidden Damage
When your house is being assessed for damage after an accident, much of it is obvious on sight. Some damage, though, is hidden and may only start causing problems long after your claim is settled, such as water damage in walls, or wet insulation. The only way to find these by conventional means is often quite destructive in itself.
Thermography is a non-invasive technique that allows many hidden defects to be found before they become problems — not to mention before your insurance claim goes through.
What Is Thermography?
Thermography is a type of infra-red imaging that allows a very accurate picture to be built up on the basis of slight differences in heat. Its uses range from medical diagnosis to military surveillance, but it’s increasingly used in the construction industry, and by extension for assessing insurance claims.
Infra-red, the energy beyond the visible spectrum that’s experienced as heat, is emitted by all objects, the strength varying according to temperature. The precise frequency also varies for different substances, in much the same way that visible light shows things as different colours.
This makes it possible to build up a detailed image of the fluctuations in heat, either directly viewed or recorded as a photo, which can reveal otherwise unseen faults.
What Can Thermography Detect?
The list is extensive, but the main uses include:
- Energy loss — thermography can identify places, such as doors and windows, that allow heat or energy to escape, which will be adding to your bills.
- Refrigerant leaks — these are hard to detect, but thermography can allow them to be found and sealed.
- Electrical hot spots — identifying places where electrical components may be damaged or about to fail.
- Insulation problems — thermography can identify insulation that’s wet or missing, either of which is both a hazard and a waste of energy.
- Detecting water damage in walls or moisture and mould — these issues can spread unseen to the point where dealing with them is expensive (and may not be covered by your insurance at that point).
- Locating underfloor heating pipes — without having to tear up the entire floor to find them.
- Businesses utilising machinery and equipment – thermography can detect faulty parts, such as bearings or loose connections, without having to dismantle the equipment. This can avoid lengthy breakdowns, which would lead to costly downtime, by taking preventative action.
Will Thermography Have Any Effect on the Property?
Though some kinds of thermography (to create night vision, for instance) involve sending out infra-red illumination before making the scan, the type used in assessing damage is an entirely non-invasive process that will have no more impact than taking a photograph. But it can save you a great deal more money than any photo.
Thermography — Saving Lives and Saving Your Insurance Claim
It’s one of the wonders of modern science that a technology which can save your life can also save you from losing out on your insurance claim. Thermography is among the tools offered by Allied Claims to make sure you’re getting what’s due to you, but it has a wide range of other applications.
Thermography is a type of thermal imaging, which can produce a picture showing any object that’s hotter than what surrounds it. Everything produces heat in the form of infrared radiation and, although it can’t be seen by the human eye, thermographic imaging equipment can pick it up and use the data to create a computer-generated image of the object.
Unlike many forms of imaging, thermography is 100% safe. X-ray imaging, for instance, involves firing X-rays at you, and although the risk is usually small and acceptable, there is a risk. Thermography only passively measures what’s already there and is no more dangerous than a camera.
Uses of Thermography
Thermography has been around for many decades and is put to a wide range of uses, from military surveillance to allowing firefighters to “see” in a smoke-filled building. One of its main applications, though, is for medical diagnosis, where its safety makes it particularly useful.
Medical thermography works because many issues inside the body, such as tumours and inflamed blood vessels, are marginally hotter than the surrounding tissue. The small difference is hard to measure by conventional methods, but it shows up on a thermographic image. Thermography can be used to diagnose cancers, deep-vein thrombosis, and back issues. It’s even used in dentistry.
How Thermography Can Save Your Insurance Claim
You may know there’s been damage done to your property, but how can you be sure you’ve found every issue? The problem is that, if you don’t include hidden damage in the claim you give your Loss Adjuster, it can be extremely difficult to convince the insurance company to pay for it later.
In the same way that thermography is safe in medical diagnosis, it can be used to see the unknown in your property with no risk at all of causing damage. It can pick up places where heat is being lost, or where insulation is wet or missing, and detects water damage or mould. It can also pinpoint electrical hotspots and refrigerant leaks.
Detecting hidden damage before you present your claim to the Loss Adjuster could potentially save you tens of thousands of pounds. To take advantage of this wonder of modern science, ring Allied Claims on 0800 999 5679 today.
This post was originally posted here.