Henley in Transition
Developing Resilience and Sustainability
It's Our Henley, Our Country, Our World - Get Involved

Infra Red Survey Spring 2010

Person to Contact: Dick Fletcher

Point, focus, calibrate, click once and click a second time – the wonders of digital technology – here you have a thermal image of a house, showing how well the roof is insulated, but look to the left at next door, heat's leaking out there, through the roof, and the walls.

Black, magenta and dark blue in this and subsequent images are 'cool' and 'good'; light blues, greens, yellows, reds and whites show more and more heat escaping.
We have just under 4,000 houses in Henley and the volunteers have got images of over 10%, so it is quite a representative survey. Why bother ? Well it helps to know if and where your house leaks heat. Look at these

The people in this well insulated house have an Aga in the kitchen and they don't draw their curtains.

The first house, with original sashes in the bow and upstairs, is losing much more heat than the one on the right with modern double glazed units - though their doors indicate that both are at a similar internal temperature.

Age is not necessarily a guide to effective insulation. Look how cool is one of the oldest buildings in town – the Barn, (left below) beside the Town Hall. Despite the fact that the bee-keepers in session above had left the door open, there's hardly any heat leaking from the room above.

Ancient wattle and daub (mud and manure mixed with hair) keeps rooms warm and cosy; you can't get it in Gibbs and Dandy though. On the right, the library at about the same time of night, busy leaking heat from every window.

Here are some of the volunteers who braved the cold winter nights – for real and in their favourite format – infra red.

They are all part of the Henley-in-Transition group – dedicated to helping find ways of reducing carbon emissions. Of course, with heating bills going up and up every year, it doesn't matter whether you believe in global warming or not, we are all united in not wanting to pay the gas and electricity companies any more than we have to !