Can you trace a hot water line above a drywall ceiling with a thermal camera?

bkudu

Hi everyone,

I work in plumbing. In older homes, you can sometimes see where a hot water line disappears above a finished basement ceiling. The tricky part is figuring out where it turns after that. I’d like to narrow that down before I cut an access opening.

My thought was to let the line cool down, then have someone run hot water upstairs while I watch the ceiling from below with a thermal camera. Has anyone tried this?

I’m especially curious about what you see when there’s an air gap between the pipe and the drywall. Could you make out where the line turned, or did you just get a warm patch that didn’t tell you much about where to cut?

Jamie Hall

Unless the line is actually in contact with the drywall — which it shouldn't be — i doubt you'd see much. Worth a try, though if you have the camera anyway…

Presuming it's actually drywall. Lathe and plaster? probably not a hope. Nor sheetrock.

PC7060

The FLIR unit we use at work is very sensitive but was $4k range. Not sure how the phone plug in types perform.

Larry Weingarten

Hi, I've had some luck finding hot lines with an IR camera that plugs into my phone. This is the Flir One Pro.

Yours, Larry