The gray book
The Shore, in readings
What we do
The readings, and what they turn into
The reading — $185, credited
Blower door, thermal camera and a monitor you watch the whole time: your house, in gray and color, losing heat in real time. Ninety minutes later you hold the images, both readings and a scope priced line by line against what the pictures actually show.
The sealing — from $900
Every bright streak the camera named gets closed — top plates, chases, the rim, the gap where an old flue passes. On the Shore’s cottages this is two-thirds of the saving, and it is the day the curtains stop moving on a windy reading.
The filling — R-60 and dense-pack
Cellulose at 3.5 lb/ft³ in the walls through 2-inch holes, and over the ceiling deep enough that the joists disappear. Then the blower door runs again, and the second reading goes beside the first on the invoice where it belongs.
The process
A reading day, cold morning preferred
The same ninety minutes on every house — fan, camera, monitor, and a household that leaves knowing exactly where its heat goes. The Shore supplies the cold mornings; we supply the rest.
The setup
The blower door seals into the front entry, the camera acclimates to the house, and the monitor goes where the household is sitting. Everyone watches; that is not a gimmick, it is the product.
The depressurize
The fan pulls the house down to fifty pascals and the number settles — cubic feet per minute at CFM50, your baseline, written down before anything else happens.
The walk
Camera first, room by room: baseboards glow, top plates streak, skipped bays stand out like headlines. Twelve minutes in, somebody always says “there it is”, pointing. That is the scope being written.
The manuscript
Images filed, readings printed, scope priced against what the pictures show — and the same crew that read the house is the crew that fixes it, so nothing gets lost between the reading and the ladder.
Why the camera rule
The images are yours
A thermal image cannot be upsold. It is either your north wall glowing or it is not, and every scope line we write has a picture behind it that you already own. When the work is done the camera comes back, and the re-read lands beside the original — the before-and-after is the whole warranty.
No image, no line
Nothing appears on a Grayling scope that the images did not show — and every reading leaves with the full image set, yours to keep, send to a second opinion, or frame. The re-read after the work is included, and it prints beside the baseline on the invoice.
Slatebrook & the Mizzen Shore, 2025 — 2026
Recent readings
Six houses from the gray book, photographed on the reading day and again at the re-read. The captions are the numbers; the numbers are the point.
The camera found the entire north wall running cold in one blue band, baseboard to eave — the builder of 1979 had insulated three walls and run out of money on the fourth. Dense-pack, one day, and the February re-read showed a wall the same color as its neighbours. The before-and-after images are the only home-improvement documents I have ever framed.
I brought three contractor quotes to the reading. Grayling put the camera on the wall each quote was about, and two of the three were pricing work the images said the house did not need. The scope that survived was theirs, cheaper, and the re-test beat it.
Twelve minutes in, my wife said “there it is” about a chase nobody had suspected since 1962. Sealed that week, and the reading dropped 900 CFM50 before they touched the attic. You cannot argue with a picture of your own house.
The fog drafts were a story I told guests for years. One reading later it was a two-foot gap above the plate, photographed, priced and closed in a morning. The file they left reads like a diagnosis, because it is one.
Before you call
Gray questions
The five the reading desk answers every week. If yours is not here, the line runs seven to five and the answer comes with pictures.
Does the thermal read need a winter day?
It needs about fifteen degrees of difference between inside and out, which the Shore supplies nine months a year. On mild weeks we run the heat hard for an hour first — the camera cares about the gap, not the calendar, and it says so on the file when we do.
What is CFM50 in plain words?
How much air leaks through your house’s envelope with a fan holding it at fifty pascals — a standard, repeatable draught. One number, comparable across houses and across years, which is why the baseline and the re-read both print on the invoice.
Can the images miss something?
They miss what is inside walls at even temperature — that is what the blower door is for, and the two instruments run together for that reason. Between them they find the holes; the scope prices only what at least one of them could see.
Why is the re-read included?
Because the before-and-after is the warranty. The number moved or it did not, the wall changed color or it did not, and you should not have to take anybody’s word for either. Every Grayling invoice carries both readings and both image sets.
Do you work in summer?
Readings year-round, sealing and filling in any month the van starts in, attic blows above 0°F for the material’s sake. The Shore’s bookings run heaviest September to March — cold mornings make the best pictures — but the crew does not stand down.
Readings book within the week — the colder the morning, the sharper the image · (555) 079-5518 · read@graylingthermal.example
Get read
Tell us the town and where the curtains move — a cold morning and ninety minutes later you will have the images, both readings and a scope priced against what the pictures show. The $185 credits against any work, and the re-read after the work is included, always. read@graylingthermal.example