I was watching Michael Holigan's Your New Home yesterday and they were talking about this aluminum-clad plywood for roofing. As a demo he had this little box built with regular plywood and the new plywood--shiny side out. Inside was a heat lamp. He was using an infrared thermometer to measure the temperatures. The plywood box, 120F and without any kind of adjustments swung over to the aluminum skin where it read about 60F--which was probably the temperature of his cameraman. I had to send them an email about the dangers of shiny surfaces. We'll see if they write back.

I know an individual that ran upon something similar in a magazine. It was an add for some "super-duper" high tech low temp headers. They claimed that these headers ran X deg's lower than a normal set. They were using one of those koko koko mo joe cheapy IR thermometers. The guy I'm talking about contacted them and told them they needed to pull their add because it was grossly incorrect and explained to them why and that they were actually running hotter than normal headers. After a little bit of arguing he offered to, for free, prove them wrong. They accepted and he took his P65 Ir camera and .................... well to make a long story short they pulled their add.
Regards,

Patrick - That's a good one. Not only did he not recognize the measurement issue but he never wondered about the result being opposite of expected. All he would have to do was put his hand on the shiny box to see it was warmer (due to lower efficiency at radiating heat).

Roy That wouldnt be Joe Demonte you are speaking of. If it is good dude, knows his stuff. Small world