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Bay Area Thermal Leak Detection: The New Science of Roof Repair

New Bay Area Roofing Repair Technologies

Our Bay Area roofing repair experts have long known that the untrained eye is bad at identifying problem roof areas. It takes time and skill to be able to tell – just from a glance – whether a set of shingles needs to be replaced or repaired. It takes years in the field to develop an intuition for how certain types of leaks spread and what to do about them.

Bay Area roofing

By Cam42 (Own work) [CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0) or GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html) ], via Wikimedia Commons

But even “expert roofers” are limited because we humans can only see in the visible light spectrum. As any astronomer (or good scientist) will tell you, non-visible wavelengths of light often reveal new phenomena and features, which can lead to progress – scientific and otherwise.

A cool new technology, called thermal leak detection, is revolutionizing the Bay Area roofing industry. Through infrared detectors (which can “see” heat), these detectors can identify leaks, water damage, moisture problems and other trouble spots that the human eye cannot detect.

For instance, let’s say a piece of electrical equipment or an HVAC unit is running “hot.” The thermal leak detection technology can note such hot and cool anomalies.

Infrared detection massively increases the efficiency of detection and repair. Here’s why:

Imagine you’re looking at a 1,000 square foot roof that’s leaking or decaying “somewhere.”

  • An untrained homeowner might be able to spot a dark patch here or there. But he’d struggle to get a sense of the entire leak – much less know how to begin to fix it.
  • An experienced roofing professional, on the other hand, could look at that same vantage, and she could see way more than you can.
  • Thermal leak detection technology can immediately “suss out” the original leak as well as the deeper structures and temperature differences.

In some ways, it’s the difference between an untrained person firing a gun blindly (homeowner trying to detect a leak); a skilled marksman firing (experienced professional using traditional tools of the craft, informed by years of experience and intuition); and a laser-guided missile (thermal leak detection).

With this increased efficiency:

  • You can laser-target the leak and not have to fix the entire roof.
  • You can stop problems before they get worse.
  • You can speed up the repair process and minimize overages and extra costs.
  • It’s also ultimately better for the environment, because the efficiency will lead to less waste production.

Find out more about whether thermal leak detection is right for your job. Call our East Bay roofing company today, or connect with us online for a free estimate.

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