Bosch gis 1000 c review

Most people have some idea what an infra red thermometer does and also what a thermal imaging camera does but this tool sits somewhere between the two, explains Roger Bisby of the Bosch GIS 1000 C.

I don’t mind admitting that it took me a while to work out exactly what the Bosch GIS 1000 does for a living. I could have read the marketing document but I like to put myself in the place of the average building worker who has to try and figure out what the device does by reading the instruction booklet alone. It isn’t easy, these things are written by people who know what the device does and they should be written by someone like me or you.

I like to put myself in the place of the average building worker who has to try and figure out what the device does by reading the instruction booklet alone

Most people have some idea what an infra red thermometer does and also what a thermal imaging camera does but this tool sits somewhere between the two. It takes pictures and it also gives thermal readings between the two dots that are projected by the lasers but it is what it does with this information that makes it different to either of those instruments.

Looks for variations

There are a lot of things you can do by measuring heat and lack of it. In the same way a doctor will determine the health of a patient by taking their temperature this device also looks for variations. Uniquely it is task based rather than simply being a data harvester. If for example you are trying to trace cold bridging in a loft conversion it will take temperatures of the average surfaces and spot any deviation and by taking the relative humidity in the room and the ambient temperature compared to the cold spots it can tell you where the dew point is likely to be. Of course you may already have spotted this by the black mould on the plaster but if you need hard information to settle a dispute or make a claim on the contractors for not installing the insulation the collected data can be downloaded onto a computer and incorporated in a report.

You can also find leaks in underfloor heating and flat roofs by using a similar method of measuring the average and the localised variations.

A plumber can use the device for tracing out buried pipework whether hot or cold and an electrician can spot hot spots on a consumer board.

One of the features I particularly like is the ability to set parameters that will set off an alarm on the detector if they are exceeded. This means you can run the device quickly up and down a plant room and immediately find any variations. In industry this kind of pre-emptive maintenance is common place. If a bearing is about to fail is will usually start to warm up or vibrate.

Having started out slightly clueless I am beginning to warm to this elegant device. It is a good deal cheaper than a thermal imaging camera

Having started out slightly clueless I am beginning to warm to this elegant device. It is a good deal cheaper than a thermal imaging camera, admittedly it doesn’t give you much in the way of those pretty pictures with the reds and oranges swirling around the windows but it gives you all that information and more and you don’t have to be a scientist to work out what it all means.

I also like that it comes in a protective case with a zip because one thing I had found with all these computer based measuring instruments is that they don’t like being dropped or kicked around the site. Look after it, get it out when you need it and put it away when you are done and it will go a long time before it need re-calibrating.