INSPECTING & TESTING

Routine INSPECTIONS and SURVEYS can predict problems before they occur, BUILDING ENVELOPE TESTING can certify new building construction

Gilman Thermographic Solutions provides accessible and comprehensive advanced thermal imaging analysis to your company’s periodic inspection cycle. Every retail or commercial facility relies on the efficient use of energy, especially electrical utility substations, supermarkets, and cold storage facilities.. any operation with high energy usage/transmission. 

Additionally, Building Envelope Testing is now a requirement in all new construction in Washington State.  We are NEBB certified to perform this test.

With the rapid increase in electrically powered vehicles and boats, periodic inspection can reveal temperature abnormalities in electrical circuits, connections, and batteries.  It can detect subtle changes in temperature and detect battery problems before a tragic thermal runaway situation.

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We work with you, to customize an inspection and analysis regimen to serve your most pressing challenges and to look around corners to improve your bottom-line. 

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New Construction - Building Envelope Testing

In 2023 Washington State is now requiring Building Envelope Testing (BET/Blower Door) on all new commercial and residential construction and major renovations. BET is a crucial evaluation process that helps determine the integrity of a building's exterior structure.  In WA, regulations require all new construction to perform blower door tests with specific numeric results about air leakage and air changes.  This testing is vital because it ensures that the building can effectively maintain climate control, energy efficiency, and structural integrity. By identifying any breaches or vulnerabilities in the envelope using forensic thermal imaging and rectifying, builders and owners can enhance the overall performance of the structure, reduce energy consumption, and mitigate potential damage caused by water or air infiltration. Therefore, building envelope testing plays a pivotal role in ensuring the long-term durability and sustainability of buildings.

Substations

Infrared thermography has become an integral part of maintenance programs throughout the utility industry.  It is by far the most efficient and effective technology available today for locating and evaluating thermal anomalies.  Thermal imaging is an advanced technology for identifying and diagnosing the hot (and cold) spots in substations, transmission lines and distribution networks. Infrared technology gives us the ability to "see" and measure temperatures on defective components and the normal wear, chemical contamination, corrosion, fatigue and faulty assembly in many electrical systems. It helps quickly locate and determine the severity of a problem, and help establish the time frame in which the equipment should be repaired.

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Cold Storage Facilities

Cold Storage facilities by their very nature have high running costs attributed to electricity charges. In this modern world of ever increasing energy costs it now makes strong financial sense to look towards energy saving and conservation.

Thermographic imaging can be used to inspect and monitor cold storage facilities. Using infrared it is easy to see where insulation panels are suffering from an integrity issue, where air ingress is allowed in or where a heated door seal is failing.  Due to the power needed to generate these temperatures, faults such as these are significant as even the smallest of problems can have a dramatic effect on energy usage.

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A thermal imaging inspection and report provides the following information:

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• Identify costly energy losses caused by warm air ingress into the cold room

• Pin-point areas of potential moisture ingress and hazardous ice formation

• Map the spatial distribution of temperature

• Identify the causes of ice build-up within walls and roof areas

• Identify electrical faults including; hot-spots, loose connections, unbalanced 3 phase loads, abnormal heating of electrical components

• Evaluate compressor health

• Identify incorrectly operating cooling systems

• Evaluate heat sources within the cold room

• Validate the construction quality and insulation continuity of a new cold room or freezer

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Supermarket

Supermarkets are one of the most energy-intensive types of commercial buildings.  Significant electrical energy is used to maintain chilled and frozen food in both product display cases and walk-in storage coolers.  The opportunity for a grocery store to lose money is substantially high if they experience a failure in either electrical supply or the compressors used for refrigeration or freezer support.  If a compressor failure upsets the regular warming/cooling cycle, the store will lose a percentage of the affected produce over the days to follow. An infrared predictive maintenance program can help avoid these costly downtimes. 

Grocery store chains also have the same roof issues as everyone else.  Failure of the roofing structure can cause product loss throughout the store.  This empowers the building owner to pay for only the areas that need fixing, rather than completely re-roofing the entire building. This can save many thousands of dollars.
 

Compressors are often ganged together to support the high cooling demand. When one compressor fails, it puts more strain on the others in the series. That strain can cause additional, even catastrophic, failures that disrupt cooling to freezers and coolers. The loss in food product can dwarf the cost of compressor repair or replacement.

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Batteries

With increasing electric vehicle deployment and the need to store energy from renewable sources, the demand continues to rise for large battery systems with high energy densities and fast charge/discharge rates. 

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Lithium-ion batteries have a profound impact on the modern industry and they are applied extensively in aircraft, electric vehicles, portable electronic devices, robotics, etc. However, LIBs are prone to failure due to overheating, over-discharging, overcharging or short-circuit.

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Heat generation in battery systems is undesirable but unavoidable, resulting from both exothermic chemical reactions and resistive current flow. Temperature anomalies, which may indicate changes in the battery's local chemical composition, electrode/electrolyte integrity, or packaging, may evolve following stresses such as continued charge/discharge cycling, external heating, overcharging, or mechanical impact.

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An infrared survey of your batteries and DC electrical system is a totally non-invasive, effective, and safe way to identify faulty cells in batteries, loose/corroded connections, defective isolators and switches... it is a great way to perform a quality check of the entire system.  For preventative maintenance on electrical systems, it's hard to beat non-contact thermal imaging.