A recent european union directive will soon lead to a requirement for property owners to provide an energy rating for any properties being either rented or sold. I have noticed some advertisements for thermography as part of this rating. At the moment no methodology has been published. Is there much information that thermography can provide for such a low tech job?

As I understand it, this has been a requirement in Canada for awhile.

Here is an article from John Snell on building envelope inspections.

http://www.flirthermography.com/media/25%20Snell%202002s.pdf

There are some examples of things to look for but no criteria. There is a list of references as follows:

"3. STANDARDS AND REFERENCES Several important standards exist to support the work of thermographers conducting building inspections. These include, among others, the following:
• ASTM C 1060-97 Practice for Thermographic Inspection of Insulation Installations in Envelope Cavities of Frame Buildings
• ASTM C-1153-97 Practice for the Location of Wet Insulation in Roofing Systems Using Infrared Imaging
• ISO 6781 Thermal insulation, qualitative detection of thermal irregularities in building envelopes, Infrared Method
• American Concrete Institute Design Standard 530 / American Society of Civil Engineers Standard 5, Masonry Building Code and Specification
• Another excellent reference, although not a standard, is the Canadian General Standards Board Manual for thermographic analysis of building enclosures (149-GP-2MP). Numerous building related papers have been published over the years; many are collected on a CD-ROM from SPIE, entitled Selected Papers from the Proceedings of Thermosense, edited by John Snell and Doug Burleigh, available from http://www.spie.org ."

I suppose what I really need to know is if its possible for somebody like myself with no experience to provide thermographic services to industry. from reading a number of posts it seems training is essential. If its possible to earn some money from non energy rating jobs it makes it easier to justify the training and the purchase of a camera