Thermal imaging survey in Axminster

Axminster's centre is Georgian and Victorian, solid wall around the church and market square, with former mill and carpet factory buildings nearby that carry large-span roofs of a very different construction, metal or ageing asbestos-cement sheet in places, which behave nothing like a domestic roof thermally and need to be read on their own terms rather than assumed to follow the pattern of the houses around them.

The post-war estates sit on the higher ground north of the town, a more conventional cavity picture, while the wider hinterland is actually rural, farmhouses and outbuildings scattered across the Axe valley farmland that surrounds the hilltop on three sides, some of them converted to residential use with all the thermal inconsistency that a barn conversion typically carries.

The hilltop position leaves the town open to wind from every direction rather than one prevailing exposure, and the Axe valley below funnels damp air upward, so exposed ridge and verge details on the older solid-wall stock take a beating regardless of which way a particular elevation faces. That matters for a thermal reading because it means there is rarely a single sheltered side of a building to use as a clean comparison, and the flight plan accounts for that rather than assuming a south-west exposure is the only one worth checking.

On the rural fringe, converted farm buildings often mix original solid stone or cob with modern insulated additions built at different times, and a thermal survey there is as much about finding the join between the two as it is about finding a single missing material.

Wind is the dominant planning factor for a flight here more than at most towns on this list, given the exposure from every quarter, so timing looks as much at forecast wind as at overnight temperature.

For the farmland properties around the town, access is straightforward compared with a dense terrace, and a single visit often covers a farmhouse and its converted outbuildings together where they sit on the same holding.

Trinity Square and the streets around the Minster Church of St Mary carry the oldest and most consistently Georgian stock in the town, solid wall with the tall sash windows typical of the period, each one a specific thermal bridging point worth checking on a cold morning. Out along the Axe valley farmland that rings the hilltop, individual farmhouses and their outbuildings are scattered widely enough that a single day's flying often covers only two or three holdings, and a booking for several properties in this area is planned as a small round rather than a single visit.