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Dr. Ren Anderson, Building Energy Technology Manager with the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, demonstrate the benefits of the advanced design features included in the building by photographing the Yonkers house along with two other neighboring structures for comparison purposes with an IR camera, supplied by DOE via the Building America Program.
The IR camera has a detector cooled to liquid nitrogen temperatures to increase accuracy and is very sensitive to small temperature differences. The camera "sees" infrared wavelengths just as the human eye sees visible wavelengths (just like in the Predator movies!).
When a heated building is viewed from the outside, hot spots show areas where heat is leaking out of the building. The color scale goes from Black, blue and violet (coldest) to red, yellow, and white (warmest). The camera can do full motion video and still shots.
Dr. Anderson took still shots at about 5am of the Habitat house, the multifamily complex directly to the west, and the apartment building directly to the North. He took the pictures at 5am in the morning because that is the time of day that provides the best resolution for outside IR shots:
- early morning generally provides the coldest and most stable outside temperature
- surfaces that may have been heated by the sun the previous afternoon have lost that extra heat throughout the night so their temperature only reflects conduction losses from inside the building very early in the morning.
The apartment complex shows the greatest heat loss .This is because its walls are uninsulated and it uses single pane windows, as is typical of older buildings.
The multifamily building has fewer heat losses than the apartment building because it has basic insulation in its walls and it has basic double pane windows.
The Habitat house shows the least amount of heat loss because it has high performance low e, argon filled double pane windows and SIP panels that are highly insulating. The red line at the base of the Habitat house is caused by the exposed area of the foundation wall. The foundation wall in its unfinished form has only has about 1/3 the insulating value of the SIP wall. When the basement is finished and additional insulation is added to its interior surface, it will perform as well as the SIP wall.
The interpretation of colors in terms of temperature for Bob1 and Bob2 is the same as for the houses. His beard provides some insulation and is indicated by dark areas on his chin and cheeks. His bare skin is warmer (red and yellow). His nose is cooler (blue) because it is cooled as he breathes.
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