Some problems only show up as a temperature.
An infrared camera reads the surface temperature of everything it looks at. Water, missing insulation and overheating wiring all change that temperature before they ever become visible — which is why I carry the camera on every inspection rather than selling it as an extra.
Infrared Certified through InterNACHITrained specifically in reading thermal images, which is the part that separates a finding from a false alarm.
What the camera picks up
Infrared won't tell you what something is. It tells you where to look, and then I look — with a moisture meter, an outlet tester, or my head in the attic. The scan narrows the search; the inspection confirms it.
Three categories come up over and over:
Water where it shouldn't be
Active plumbing leaks inside walls and ceilings, roof leaks that haven't stained through yet, wet insulation, and intrusion around windows, doors and roof penetrations.
Insulation that isn't doing its job
Gaps, settled batts and areas that were never insulated show as cold or hot patches across a ceiling. It explains the room nobody can keep comfortable. The ceiling in these photos is a typical one: an installer pulled the insulation back to fit the can lights and never replaced it. I walked through how I read that scan in more detail.
Electrical running hot
Breakers, overloaded circuits and loose connections heat up long before they fail. A hot spot in a panel is one of the few findings I'll tell you to deal with immediately.
What infrared can't do
Plenty of inspectors advertise thermal imaging as though it were x-ray vision. It isn't, and knowing the limits is what makes the findings trustworthy.
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It reads surfaces, not interiors
The camera measures the temperature of the surface it can see. What's behind a wall registers only if it has changed that wall's surface temperature.
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Reflective surfaces lie
Glass, shiny metal and pale surfaces in direct sun reflect rather than radiate, so the reading isn't the object's real temperature. Those areas get checked another way.
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It needs a difference to find
Without a temperature differential there's nothing to see. A mild day with the HVAC off is the worst case; I'll say so rather than report a clean scan that proves nothing.
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Interpretation is the whole job
A cold patch can be a leak, a draft, or a stud. Telling them apart comes from training and from having been wrong before. That's what the Infrared Certified credential is for.
Every infrared image in the report sits next to a normal photo of the same spot. A thermal image on its own is a colored blob that means nothing to anyone but me. Side by side, you can see exactly which wall, which corner, and how far it runs.
Thermal imaging comes with the inspection
It isn't an add-on and there's nothing to decide. Book the inspection and the camera comes with me.