Certification procedure of building thermographers

Abstract

Thermography has been used in Finland in building survey from the late 70´s. The service has been provided by consultants, whose background is varied. When technology and devices have improved and the prices have increased, more and more doers have come into the market. At the same time, building developers and contractors have begun to use thermography for quality control in new building. Thermography has also been used in renovation planning. The problem is, that there are no procedures for building thermography, no guidelines to order the thermography services, no instructions how to scan, how to report and most important -how to interpret the results. That fact has caused a lot of problems and also damaged the reputation and reliability of the method.In this year 2004 the various organizations in building trade launched a pilot project to certificate building thermographers. The procedure is divided into two parts: Part 1 is Level I (the basis of thermography) and Part II (divided into two periods) thermography applications of buildings, including also information on building physics, heat and mass transfer and structures.Both parts will take a week, two weeks in total with the examinations. The procedure follows moisture measurement procedure -certification of building moisture measurements started a couple of years ago.In the paper the procedure, problems and the future plans are introduced. The following big issue is to develop and improve the interpretation procedure for reporting the results of thermography.