Every Fall when the weather turns from shorts weather to snow in a matter of 24 hours, it triggers the inner squirrel in me to get ready for Winter. Replace windows, weather strip doors, blast 20 cans of expanding foam in every nook and cranny possible, tape the air ducts. No matter how much I do I still seems to have little effect. New England winters are no fun, I don’t care what people say. Once that furnace kicks on all you really hear is the sound of money vanishing.
Now if you’re lucky enough to live in a quality new construction home, you have no idea what I’m talking about because your house is probably so air tight that you can feel the air pressure change when someone opens & closes a door. For the rest of us it’s a challenge to keep the cold air out and heat in, and it sucks being cold, and it sucks even more spending a fortune to heat the house and still be cold.
My weapon this year…. The FLIR ONE Pro thermal camera. I’ve wanted a thermal camera for a while now, but they have been expensive. Sure I could rent one, but I know I will want to use it more than a day. When that cold windy days hit and I feel it, I will forensically find and seal every draft I can. So $75/day to rent, or just pony up $350 for this unit that seems more than capable.
FLIR ONE Pro vs Seek Thermal XR
As usual I did a good amount of due diligence and product research. The other thermal camera I considered was the Seek Thermal XR Imager, which was $100-$150 less, but the main deciding factors were:
- FLIR uses 2 cameras for a real image overlay so you know exactly what you are looking at and not just the heat map.
- FLIR uses it’s own battery so it doesn’t drain your phone as much.
- FLIR is one of the strongest names in thermal imaging industry.
