The Whole-Home Walkthrough

An hour before you start, close every window and exterior door and let the HVAC hold one steady temperature. Fifteen minutes before you start, turn on every bathroom and kitchen exhaust fan and leave them running for the whole walkthrough — the slight vacuum pulls outside air through every gap in the house, turning faint leaks into vivid, unmissable streaks.

Grab your phone for voice notes and a roll of painter’s tape. When you find something, you’ll shoot it on the thermal, mark the spot with a small piece of tape, and dictate one sentence — "master bedroom, north wall, cold bay left of window." Ninety minutes from now, those notes are the difference between a folder of pretty pictures and a to-do list.

Then walk the route below in order. It’s sequenced so the fans have time to do their work before you hit the leak-prone rooms, the wet rooms get scanned after their plumbing has run, and the panel gets scanned after real load has warmed any weak connection.

Before the deep interior work, take one slow lap around the outside — it frames everything you’ll see inside. In winter, look up first: bare melt streaks through a snowy roof mark escaping attic heat, and uneven melt lines along the eaves point at wall-top insulation gaps you’ll confirm from inside. On siding, look for vertical trails under window sills (water getting past flashing) and a glow around door frames.

Skip any wall the sun has touched in the last two hours — solar loading will drown the real signal. Overcast days and pre-dawn are exterior gold.

Now the core sweep. In each room with an exterior wall: one slow pass over every exterior wall ceiling-to-floor, then the window and door frames, then any outlet or switch on an exterior wall. You’re hunting rectangles (insulation voids), streaks (air leaks — the fans are making these obvious now), and the normal stud stripes that tell you your contrast is good.

In top-floor rooms, add the ceiling: slow passes under the attic, watching for cold rectangles between joists where insulation was disturbed or never laid. Finish the floor with the attic hatch — with the fans running, a leaky hatch will be wearing its cold halo.

Budget three to four minutes per room and resist the urge to linger; tape, shoot, note, move. You can return to anything interesting at the end.

The kitchen is appliance country. Scan all four edges of the fridge and freezer doors for gasket failures, the dishwasher (mid-cycle, thanks to Station 0) and the cabinet floor around its supply line, and inside the sink cabinet at the drain and supply penetrations — where plumbing exits to the wall is a favorite air-leak and slow-drip spot.

If the range hood vents outside, scan its duct path too; an unbacked damper is a surprisingly large hole to the outdoors.

The shower you ran in Station 0 has now pushed hot water through the supply lines and given any slow leak time to bloom. Scan the ceiling directly below every upstairs bathroom, the walls that carry supply lines, around the toilet base, and inside the vanity cabinet.

In the laundry, pull the machines forward enough to scan the wall behind them — supply valves and drain standpipes live there, and nobody looks at that wall for years at a time. A dryer mid-cycle also paints its duct path; kinks and leaks show as hot blotches where they shouldn’t be.

Downstairs, work the perimeter first: the rim joist — the band where the house frame sits on the foundation — is the most under-insulated square footage in most homes and shows as a glowing cold band at the top of basement walls. Then the mechanical corner: the water heater tank (a good one barely registers; a glowing one wants a blanket), the first few feet of hot-water pipe, and the furnace’s supply trunk while it runs.

Finish with the electrical panel — cover ON. Your dryer, dishwasher, and HVAC have been loading circuits for an hour, which is exactly what you want: scan the panel face and look for one breaker meaningfully hotter than its working neighbors. Photograph anything asymmetric along with the panel schedule so you can name the circuit.

If your rental window includes an evening, two things are worth a second look after dark. First, re-scan your worst two or three windows and doors from inside — with the sun long gone and outdoor temperatures dropping, leaks reach maximum contrast. Second, take the camera outside for the fun part: sweep under the deck, along fence lines, and at the eaves. Warm bodies glow; if squirrels are getting into the attic, dusk is when the exit hole shows traffic.

While it’s fresh, walk your tape marks once more and rank what you found: air-sealing fixes you can do with a $6 tube of caulk this weekend; appliance fixes like gaskets and water-heater blankets; contractor conversations for insulation voids and anything electrical or actively wet. Match each item to its photo and voice note.

After you return the camera, we export every image you captured and email the full set to you — your tape-mark notes plus those images are a complete, prioritized punch list for the house. That’s the whole premium in one sentence: ninety minutes of walking, and the house has nowhere left to hide.