Infrared guns: Reduce your heating and cooling bills with this tool and a few simple techniques.

An infrared heat detector can give you a full understanding of where your house is losing heat in cold weather, or gaining it in summer. The more you know about where heat is entering or leaving your house, the more effective you'll be at controlling energy waste.

With an infrared point-and-shoot thermometer, you just move about the inside and outside of your home on a hot summer day or a cold winter evening, and take readings at windows, outside doors, walls, or wherever else heat may leak through. The heat gun quickly gives you a detailed picture of problems with insulation, sealing, or windows in need of an upgrade.

Professional home energy auditors often use infrared imaging to illustrate where you're losing or gaining heat, but infrared cameras cost a lot and the audit itself can run over $200. An infrared heat gun doesn't give you the same colorful printout, but they only cost about $50, so they put this level of detail within reach of the average homeowner.

Most infrared heat detectors come with a beam angle of 1:12, which means that if you point the gun at a wall 12 feet away, then press the trigger, you'll get a temperature reading for a one square foot area of the wall. They also typically have a laser beam so you can see exactly what spot the reading was done from.

I suggest beginning your infrared thermal audit from outside. Standing 12 feet back, take a series of readings with your infrared heat detector to figure out what the baseline temperature is. You are looking for the coldest temperature in winter, or the hottest in summer when the AC is running.

Don't take readings on a sunlit surface, because it can mess up your results. Rather, wait for a cloudy period, for evening, or for the sun to move.

Note each measurement on a sketch of the house face or in note form. Pay particular attention to window temperatures, because these are major areas of thermal leakage both in summer and winter. You may want an inside helper to close shades and curtains after your first measurement so you can then measure the impact of these window coverings on stopping thermal leaks.

Where measurements are considerably worse than your baseline (warmer in winter, colder in hot weather), take more measurements nearby, to locate the extent of the thermal leak. You may have missing or settled insulation, cracks or even holes in the wall surface, or a gap in a window or door.

Next do an indoor heat audit of the outward-facing walls, floor, and ceiling of each room. Choose an interior wall as your baseline; exterior wall temperatures should be colder than the baseline in winter, or hotter in hot weather. Again, you are after thermal leaks on window panes, around windows and doors, through light fixtures, in cracks in drywall or plaster, or anywhere that is touching an exterior wall. Take close-up measurements of any wall outlets or light switches that are close to the exterior, even if they are on an interior wall.

Take readings of top floor ceilings, as insulation, especially blown in insulation, can get pressed or matted down in leaky attics. For hot weather measurements, do your ceiling readings twice: once early in the morning before the sun has warmed the attic space, and once in the afternoon when the attic is hot, so you can determine how much of that heat leaks into your living space.

Chances are that windows without their window coverings are your biggest heat leaks, as even the most efficient windows have a much lower thermal barrier capability than walls or ceilings. You can either upgrade old windows with more efficient ones, add thermal curtains or blinds, or apply energy efficient window film to the window pane itself.

You may well find drafts in walls, particularly at light fixtures or where wires or pipes exit the house. You should seal these as much as possible, as drafts can be major contributors to home energy costs. Caulk around the edges of window frames; use wall outlet insulating foam to block airflow through the outlets. Your bricks may need tuck pointing, or you may have a more serious problem: settled fiberglass insulation between wall studs, in which case the only solution is to take down the walls from within and put in new insulation and drywall. If the walls have no insulation whatsoever you at least have the option to inject foam insulation, which is a cheaper option.

It makes a lot of sense to do your own mini-audit with your infrared heat gun first, and call the contractors later. If you have identified your big thermal leaks, you'll be able to ask each contractor what solutions they recommend to your problem. Asking a contractor over and just telling them the house gets too cold in winter, or boiling hot in hot weather, means inviting major repairs that might not do any good.

You can use an infrared heat gun for countless other measurements around the house, such as checking hot water pipe temperature before and after adding pipe wrap; measuring the air coming out of forced air registers and going into the air return register, if you have central air conditioning, to gauge air conditioner efficiency; measuring frying temperatures on your stove; or finding the ideal spot in your basement for a wine cellar.

Whatever model infrared point-and-shoot thermometer you choose, you are sure to get many hours of use out of it, locating the hotspots and cold spots in your walls, floors and ceilings, your garage, your fridge, freezer, your car engine - anywhere you might want to know the surface temperature. You can even use it to measure the temperature of your compost heap - without getting your hands dirty!

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