I finally spent $200 on a name-brand thermal imager and found out my $40 one was off by 15 degrees

Wasted 6 months chasing phantom hot spots on a commercial panel in Phoenix before I borrowed my buddy's Flir and realized my cheap camera was reading 95°F when the real temp was 110°F, has anyone else had a cheap thermal tool lead them down a wrong path?

2 comments

2 Comments

tyler17619d ago

Bought a cheapo infrared gun from Harbor Freight to check my attic insulation. Spent two weekends adding vents and sealing gaps based on readings that showed the whole roof was cold. Then my neighbor let me borrow his Fluke and turned out my gun was reading 20 degrees low. Basically made my attic worse for no reason.

thomas29119d ago

Wait, did you ever test the emissivity setting on that Harbor Freight gun? Most cheap ones lock you into a default number, and if your roof is a different material than what they set it for, you'll get readings that are way off and there's no way to adjust it. @tyler176 you probably messed up your attic air sealing by closing vents that were actually working fine, all because the tool was reading cold from a wrong setting. Those cheap guns are great for checking if a pipe is frozen, but they're useless for any job where you need exact numbers.