IR Thermometer

[David Hearn]

Maplin are currently doing an IR thermometer for £29.99 + delivery. On orders > £30 its free delivery, and if you've already signed up to their email list, you can get £2 off £5 orders or something similar - certainly low enough for this purchase. Price will go back up to £49.99 on 24th Dec it seems.

Looking at the specs of the one at CPC people have posted, it looks similar - +-2% of reading or +-2 oC accuracy though it has 0.5 degree resolution rather than 1 degree on the CPC one. Oh, and the Maplin's one range is higher - but who really would be using a cheap thermometer for >

270 degrees?

've ordered one and I'll see how it goes. Finally gave in after spending

10 minutes trying to get a pipe thermometer onto a boiler output pipe which was in a confined and hot space and then waiting for ages whilst it settles and then doing the same on 7 rads and then having to put it back onto the boiler again...

Hopefully it'll work as described.

Incidentally - is there any way of using it to measure a room's temperature? I realise it measures surface temps - just wondered whether it could be used to measure a room's air temp as well - doubt it - but worth asking.

Thanks

D

[Grunff]

It does - it's very good.

No. Your best bet is to measure the temperature of something sitting on a shelf/table.

[Ed Sirett]

Agreed. The only drawback is that you will get a very wrong reading from shiny/metal surfaces. I find that a couple of turns of sparky tape applied to a pipe will sort the problem.

[Tim Hardisty]

I bought one a few weeks ago to assist with rebalancing my system after I'd added some new rads and altered some of the pipe layouts.

It was much easier than my previous attempts with flying-lead thermocouple junctions thingies on a DVM.

I would also add that it is essential to get the measuring device very close to the pipe to get a repeatable reading - the measuring area diverges to 100mm at 1m, so even 150mm (6 inches in old money) away it will be reading an area that's the same as a 15mm pipe; so >150mm away and you will pick up some of the background areas too. And I doubt that the laser spot is that well aligned.

I started my balancing attempts by measuring the temp at the bottom corners of the double convector rads for this reason, but I found I was getting very inconsistant results. I still cannot explain why, but I found readings close up to (dirty!) copper pipes were fine.

And, its great fun measuring the temperatures of all sorts of things around the home! A "boy toy" as SWMBO describes it :-)

Oh - I got my order above £30 by buying a maplin catalogue CD for £1.50 IIRC. Tim Hardisty. Remove HAT before replying