Mmfitzpatrick
Member
Great post. But just a note of caution about heat guns. They are very useful, but you need to understand how they work. You are not just measuring temp at the red dot, it is the center of the cone that you are measuring.Thanks to this thread, I moved up my annual electrical panel and circuit breaker inspection.
After loading the generator to max (40A) by turning all the heavy AC loads, and after about 15 minutes, I take my heat gun and shoot everything.
I'm mainly interested in terminal and circuit breaker temps, especially for high load circuits.
The first pic shows the temp (91F) for the water heater circuit breaker. The second pic shows the crimped connection temp (155F). The third pic shows the wire temp (100F) about 1" before the crimped connection. Talk about highly localized heat!
What you should know is that the circuit was wired new in 2009 with 12/3 when there was a 1000 watt water heater. This was replaced in 2015 with a 1500 watt water heater, but the #12 wire should have been ok if there had not been a weakness at the crimp.
So, after replacing the crimp: 1) Going to move the inspection schedule to every 6 months, and 2) give thanks to the heat gun. Again! Great tootl!
The guns have a spec usually in degrees of Arc that they measure. So narrower Arc, better gun. Also the closer you get, the better the measurement.
So if you are measuring something close to a higher temperature, it will read higher. If you are measuring something small, like a wire, it will read lower.
Still a must have trouble shooting tool.