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Answers, not blog posts.
Written to be useful to a building manager who has been asked for something and needs to know what it means. Every article opens with a direct answer, and the measured criteria are on the page rather than behind a phone call.
Balcony and podium deck leaks in strata buildings
Almost every balcony leak traces to one of five defects — a membrane that stops short at the upturn, a failed or missing puddle flange at the drain, balustrade or awning fixings drilled through the membrane, a movement joint that was tiled straight over, or a door threshold set too low. The water shows on the soffit or in the unit below because it runs along the top of the membrane until it finds a penetration. Finding which one it is takes a staged flood test with moisture mapping, not a guess and a tube of silicone.
Read the answer →Leak detectionWhy a leak shows up in a different place from where it starts
Water entering a building follows the path of least resistance, not the shortest one. It runs along the top of a slab, down the inside face of a stud, across a suspended ceiling, or along a service penetration until something stops it — and that is where it becomes visible. The stain marks the end of the journey, not the beginning. This is why repairs based on the visible damp patch so often fail: the defect is somewhere else entirely, and the only reliable way to find it is to map the moisture through the build-up and work backwards to a source.
Read the answer →Inspection & NDTUTT vs UT — what is the difference?
UTT (ultrasonic thickness testing) measures remaining wall thickness at a defined point and reports a number in millimetres — it answers how much steel is left. UT (ultrasonic flaw detection) uses an angled beam to search the volume of a weld or component for cracks, lack of fusion and laminations — it answers whether something is in there. Both send sound into steel from the same style of instrument, but they use different probes, different calibration and different operator certification, and one cannot substitute for the other.
Read the answer →Electrical thermographyWhat ΔT is considered a critical electrical fault?
A temperature difference greater than 30 °C against an identical reference component, or a fault temperature above 100 °C, is rated Priority 1 — Critical: a serious abnormality where immediate repair is recommended. Below that, 20–30 °C is Priority 2 (repair within a week), 10–20 °C is Priority 3 (rectify when convenient and re-inspect), and under 10 °C is Priority 4 — no abnormality at the time of inspection.
Read the answer →ComplianceAnnual Thermal Imaging Inspections for Electrical Switchboards – Has Your Insurance Company Requested One?
Most Australian commercial insurers now ask for an annual thermographic switchboard inspection at renewal, carried out by a certified thermographer on boards that are live and carrying at least 40% of normal load. The report they want names each board, gives the measured temperature difference against a reference component, assigns a priority rating and states a repair timeframe. A photograph of a warm board with no measurements attached is not an inspection report and underwriters increasingly reject it.
Read the answer →Is my pool leaking, or is it just evaporation?
Run the bucket test. Fill a bucket with pool water, stand it on a step so it is partly submerged, mark the water level inside and outside, switch the pump and auto-fill off, and leave it 24 hours. Evaporation affects both levels equally — so if the pool drops more than the bucket, you have a leak. As a rule of thumb, losing more than about 5 mm a day beyond what the bucket loses is worth investigating, and anything over 25 mm a day is a significant leak.
10 Sept 2026Leak detectionThermal imaging, moisture meters and microwave mapping — what each one actually detects
An infrared camera does not measure moisture at all — it measures surface temperature and infers moisture from evaporative cooling, which makes it excellent for finding where to look and unreliable for confirming what is there. A pin or pinless moisture meter measures electrical properties at or just under the surface, and is affected by salts, density and finish. Microwave reflection moisture mapping measures water content through the build-up, to depths up to around 300 mm, largely independently of the material. Used together they answer three different questions: where, how much, and how deep.
10 Sept 2026Inspection & NDTHow often should ultrasonic thickness testing be done?
The interval is calculated, not chosen. Measure the remaining wall, subtract the minimum thickness the equipment needs, and divide by the corrosion rate in millimetres per year to get the remaining life. The next inspection is set at half that remaining life, capped by whatever maximum the applicable code or the site scheme of inspection allows. A line losing 0.25 mm a year with 1.9 mm of usable wall left has 7.6 years of life and should be re-measured in under four.
9 Sept 2026Inspection & NDTMagnetic particle or dye penetrant — which one for your crack?
Use magnetic particle testing (MT) on ferromagnetic materials — carbon and low-alloy steel, cast iron — because it is faster, tolerates a rougher surface, and will also find defects a few millimetres below it. Use dye penetrant testing (PT) when the material is not magnetic: austenitic stainless, aluminium, copper alloys, titanium. PT works on carbon steel too, but only for defects that break the surface, and only on a clean, uncoated, unsmeared surface.
9 Sept 2026Leak detectionMicrowave Reflection Based Moisture Mapping Technology
Microwave reflection moisture mapping measures moisture inside a building element rather than on its surface. A sensing head emits a low-power microwave field, and the water in the material changes how that field is reflected — water responds far more strongly than concrete, render, screed or insulation, so the reading tracks water content almost independently of what the material is made of. Different heads reach different depths, so moisture can be mapped layer by layer without cutting anything open.
9 Sept 2026Electrical thermographyDiagnosing Electrical Problems Safely With Thermal Imaging
Thermal imaging diagnoses electrical faults without contact, from outside the arc flash boundary, on equipment that stays live and loaded. The accuracy of what it tells you depends almost entirely on the surface being measured: emissivity, reflection and the size of the target against the camera's measurement spot will each shift a reading, and all three shift it in the same direction — too low. Understanding the surface is what separates a measurement from a picture.
9 Sept 2026Electrical thermography3 Ways Infrared Thermography Improves Electrical Maintenance
Infrared thermography improves electrical maintenance in three ways: it finds developing faults while equipment is still running, so repairs are planned rather than forced; it produces measured evidence that lets you rank work by severity instead of guessing; and repeated over time it establishes trends, which turns a list of findings into a maintenance programme that predicts failure rather than reacting to it.
9 Sept 2026Electrical thermographyElectrical Thermography Benefits for Building Managers
For a building manager, electrical thermography converts an unpredictable risk into a scheduled line item. It surveys main and tenancy distribution boards without an outage, produces a documented condition record for the building's asset register, satisfies the annual inspection condition most insurers now attach at renewal, and gives a defensible answer to a committee or owner asking whether the electrical infrastructure is safe.
9 Sept 2026ComplianceInsurance Companies Request Electrical Thermography For Risk Mitigation Purposes
Insurers request electrical thermography because faulty electrical equipment is one of the most common causes of commercial building fires, and an infrared survey intercepts the fault while it is still a maintenance item. For the insurer it converts an unquantified risk into a documented, dated condition record. For the insured it is usually a renewal condition, and the report has to contain measured temperature differences and priority ratings — not photographs.
9 Sept 2026ComplianceAsk yourself... "Isn't Fire Prevention Better Than Fire Protection?"
Fire protection systems — alarms, sprinklers, extinguishers — are designed to limit damage once a fire has started. Fire prevention removes the cause before ignition. In commercial buildings, a large share of electrical fires begin at a loose or degraded connection that has been heating quietly behind a closed cover, and a thermographic switchboard survey finds exactly that class of fault while the building keeps operating.
9 Sept 2026Rope access10 Benefits of Utilising Rope Access for Building Maintenance & Construction
Rope access is faster to mobilise, cheaper on most short-duration jobs, and less disruptive than scaffold or elevated work platforms. A crew can be productive on the face within hours rather than days, there is no structure occupying footpaths or car parks, and because the technician is also the tradesperson or inspector, a defect can often be repaired on the same visit it was found.
9 Sept 2026Thermography basicsSpatial Resolution Explained
Spatial resolution describes the smallest area an infrared camera can resolve, set by its detector pixel count and lens field of view. Measurement resolution — the smallest area from which it can return an accurate temperature — is coarser still, typically around three times the size. If the target is smaller than that measurement spot, the camera averages it with its surroundings and reports a temperature that is too low.
9 Sept 2026Electrical thermographyThermographic technology keeps rides going during theme park electrical safety inspection
Theme parks are among the hardest sites to inspect electrically, because the rides that most need checking are the ones that cannot be taken out of service during operating hours. Infrared thermography solves this by surveying boards, drives and motor control centres while they are live and under real operating load — which is also the only condition in which a developing fault is visible at all.
9 Sept 2026Thermography basicsSave BIG Money on Home Energy Bills
A thermal imaging survey of a home shows where conditioned air is escaping and where heat is getting in — missing or slumped insulation, gaps around downlights and ceiling penetrations, poorly sealed doors and windows, and uninsulated ducting. Because the camera reads surface temperature directly, it finds the specific locations worth sealing rather than leaving you to guess, which is what makes the remedial spend worth making.
9 Sept 2026Nothing in that category yet.
Not covered here?
If you have been asked for an inspection and are not sure what is actually being requested, ask us. We would rather answer the question than quote the wrong scope.