How Buildings Lose Heat, Part 1: Conduction
Buildings lose energy two ways: through solid material (conduction) and through moving air (convection).
This post covers conduction — and why the insulation you paid for may not be doing its job.
Insulation works by trapping still air. Crush a batt against a purlin, staple it too tight or pack it into a cavity that’s too small, and the air is squeezed out. The material is still there, but it now conducts heat instead of stopping it.
That’s why R-value is only meaningful as installed. A batt compressed to half its thickness is nowhere near its rated performance — and nothing on the surface will tell you.
Viewed from inside a heated building in cold weather, a well-insulated wall and an uninsulated one show opposite thermal patterns:
Cold studs, warm cavities. Timber conducts more heat than insulation, so the studs read cooler. That’s a wall working correctly.
Warm studs, cold cavities. With nothing in the cavity, heat pours straight through and the pattern flips.
Read it the wrong way round and you get a confidently wrong report. The camera is only half the job — interpretation is the other half.
We’ll show you exactly where your building is losing heat — located, imaged and explained.
Defects only show when there’s a real temperature difference across the building envelope. Too small, and they stay invisible. That makes energy analysis seasonal — the right window is limited.
Anyone can point a thermal camera at a wall. We tell you what it means — and what to do about it.
We read the physics, not just the colours — so you don’t act on a pattern that’s been read backwards.
Every finding is located, imaged and paired with a daylight photo and conditions — ready for warranty, insurance or defects claims.
Facades, roofs, air leakage, pipework and refractory-lined boilers, kilns and furnaces — one team, one method.
Next in the series: Part 2 — Convection. Air leakage, stack effect, and why the side you inspect from changes everything. Explore our thermography services →
