Monitor Moisture With Cloud-Based Remote Technology
Builder Ben Bogie explains how installing monitoring devices takes the guesswork out of diagnosing and solving moisture issues, particularly in high-performance wall and roof assemblies.
In this webinar excerpt from the FHB Summit, high-performance builder Ben Bogie and carpenter and contractor Dan Kolbert discuss the what, where, why, and how of utilizing moisture monitors inside walls.
Ben Bogie:
I should probably get a better hobby, but I find myself sitting on the couch at night, checking what the relative humidity is inside of my wall assemblies at certain times of the year. If you bury monitors in key locations throughout the assembly, you have access to that information. The one I have on screen is from OmniSense and it costs about $40-$50 each.
Generally, we’ll put them in a roof assembly, a north facing wall, a south facing wall, and then one on the inside of the building. This allows us to watch what’s happening temperature wise and humidity wise inside of the building which then allows us to control the indoor environment for comfort and air quality for the client. We can correlate anything that we’re seeing happening inside of the wall to anything that’s happening inside of the building.
They have a lithium-ion battery that will last anywhere from five to 40 years, depending on their sample rate and temperature conditions. The worst case scenario is that we’ll gather five years of data off of this. They communicate via an antenna on what looks like a wireless router.
As it spits out information, we can plot out our wood moisture contents, our relative humidities, and our temperatures and see how they are doing in different areas of the building. I label them so that I know where they are, so that if I ever have any issues or want to go back, and for some reason, check on the sensor or remove it, I know where it is.
Watch the video to hear the rest of the conversation.
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Over My Dead Body. Google will collect your information, and *will* sell it, perhaps to a site that buyers can look up problems, kind of like carfax for houses. (which is wrong 50% of the time.)
I can collect my own data, and keep it close to home. No Cloud.