Heat Detectors

[cantharis]

People get very worried about LEO using heat detectors to detect their grow, and I have read quite a bit of mis-information on the subject, so I hope this post may clarify matters.
LEO fly around in helicopters aiming heat detectors at people and buildings - these devices detect infrared radiation. All objects warmer than absolute zero will emit some infrared radiation, and the warmer the object the more infrared radiation it will produce, and the spectrum of that radiation changes as well.
So what the heat detectors do very well is showing objects that are warmer than their surroundings. We have all seen the police pursuit videos where the fleeing villains (who are warm) are glowing white and all laughed when the perp hiding in the bushes stands out like a dog´s balls on the heat detector. Also heat detectors are inexpensive and widely used by all police departments, and for many uses as well as detecting possible grows.
So how does this affect us growers? First of all, cannabis plants growing in fields or woods are at exactly the same temperature as all the other plants around them, so do NOT show up on heat detectors. Good news for the outdoor growers then.
Indoor growers have more of a problem, as their grow room is often hotter than the rest of the house, and any exterior walls will show up as being warmer than the surrounding brickwork. But the same is true for a warm bathroom, the wall supporting your central heating boiler or hot water tank. In fact, it is perfectly normal to see a whole load of hotspots in a street of houses. Where you will run into problems is if your ENTIRE house is a growing area, and the whole building is glowing on the detector. A small grow in one room, better still if there are no external walls to that room, or in a cupboard is unlikely to attract attention. So keep it small, and you are almost certainly OK.
I should mention airborne spectrometers as well. These are only bad news for SOME outdoor growers. All growing plants reflect visible light from the sun, and the spectrum of that visible light is characteristic of the species of plant. You can see this yourself, your cannabis plant is clearly a different green from, say, a holly bush. Airborne spectrometers are tuned to the spectrum of light reflected from Mary Jane plants, and can indicate whether a particular plant is cannabis or not. The good news for us is that these devices are expensive, not all police departments have them. And they are most effective at detecting a large number of plants all together. An operator would have to get quite lucky to find a single plant growing in a wood. The message is keep your outdoor grow spread out if you can, not all in one spot.
I hope this keeps a few more plants safe from LEO.

[Klutter]

Good info Cantharis....

Couple of things to note:

Heat 'detectors' or FLIR has come down in price over the past few years and would no longer, IMHO, be considered something that is 'rare' for DEA to possess and use.

For a good taste of what goes down, tune in to the stupid/shitty/horrible DEA show on Reality TV... they usually have a Grow-Take-Down at least 1 episode a month on that show and it's good to see what they do.

If you are growing in a closet/basement/etc - FLIR can detect the signature ONLY at night. This is VERY good news for those of us using CFL for veg (not much of a heat signature at all) and HPS for flower... if you setup your 12hrs of lights on to be during daylight hours - you're pretty much in the clear when it comes to this type of detection.

[cantharis]

Thanks Klutter, but I can´t see that station here in sunny Spain. LOL

Floruos FTW, grow during daylight, turn lights off and let the room vent off heat from the lights, crank the ac down to 70 and let it run for the night, hps = heat = heat mark on ur house = bust, flouros or cfl = little to no heat = lot harder for them to spot = safe

[randell]

nice info

[Illadelph_Coil]

In a 5-4 opinion delivered by Justice Antonin Scalia, the Court held that "[w]here, as here, the Government uses a device that is not in general public use, to explore details of the home that would previously have been unknowable without physical intrusion, the surveillance is a 'search' and is presumptively unreasonable without a warrant." In dissent, Justice John Paul Stevens argued that the "observations were made with a fairly primitive thermal imager that gathered data exposed on the outside of [Kyllo's] home but did not invade any constitutionally protected interest in privacy," and were, thus, "information in the public domain."

[CannabisMaximus]

Yeah....but just because you have a source of radiant heat emanating from a particular room, it's not enough to obtain a warrant.

It could be a hot tub, a sauna, a room that is not in use & all AC vents closed, or many other things that emit heat.

The number #1 rule for not getting caught is: DO NOT TELL ANYONE!!!!

http://www.spike.com/video/dea-season-1/2981453

link to the video on heat things on spike

[NYCdeisel]

Good info OP, i had been wondering about this stuff latly, how they see it and all, and great link Sticky_Icky3, very interesting show i will have to check when it comes on, assuming that it still airs.

[BigBadBuds]

Originally Posted by Illadelph_Coil

In a 5-4 opinion delivered by Justice Antonin Scalia, the Court held that "[w]here, as here, the Government uses a device that is not in general public use, to explore details of the home that would previously have been unknowable without physical intrusion, the surveillance is a 'search' and is presumptively unreasonable without a warrant." In dissent, Justice John Paul Stevens argued that the "observations were made with a fairly primitive thermal imager that gathered data exposed on the outside of [Kyllo's] home but did not invade any constitutionally protected interest in privacy," and were, thus, "information in the public domain."

It may not be admissible evidence, but it will still tip of the doughnut-mongers.

[dlmebag]

Yea but if there's heat in your CLOSET... Its pretty obvious.

[jmoney989]

does anyone know if those emergency blankets will work against a spectrometer?

You could probably line your ceiling with the blankets and block the thermal imagry I know they work against thermal imaging by reflecting it.

[420HelperMan]

no thoise emergency blankets wont work against them. But there are ways to build a room to do that.

[Noobm4ge]

If you try Mylar, you're prolly gunna get busted. Get the grow reflector things maybe? Not the ballasts or light reflectors around the bulb, the somewhat expensive plant gro reflector material. I will google!

[AvacadoGeorge]

Yeah ive seen rolls of IR blocking matering at plenty of shops, ive seen a few videos of diff companies showing how much better their product is vs some other one using an actually flir camera to show the diffrence.


What REALLY boggles my mind, is why a group of grown men do so much to find a plant? Not even to use it for that matter but because they hate it, like the plant is a witch or something, its quite a social phenomena in my mind.