Spent $75 on a thermal camera for my phone and it paid for itself in a week

I was stuck on a fridge that would not get cold enough, and the usual checks came up empty. I plugged in this little FLIR One camera and scanned the evaporator coils. Right away, I saw a cold spot about a third of the way down, pointing to a partial blockage in the sealed system. Without it, I would have spent hours guessing or even condemned the unit. Has anyone else found a good use for one of these on tricky cooling jobs?

2 comments

2 Comments

keith2642d ago

My old LG window unit was barely cooling last summer. Hooked up a Seek thermal to it and saw the whole left side of the condenser coil was way hotter than the right. Found a huge mat of cottonwood seeds packed in there that I totally missed on the visual check. Cleared it out and it blew ice cold. That thing has saved me so much time on airflow issues.

adam92d ago

Remember my buddy complaining his fridge was running nonstop. He was ready to call a repair guy. I told him to borrow my thermal camera first. Sure enough, one corner of the condenser coil was a bright hot spot. Turned out the fridge was shoved too close to the wall and a dust bunny the size of a small animal was blocking airflow. He cleaned it, pushed the fridge out a bit, and the problem just went away. Those cameras turn a guessing game into a five minute fix.