Thermal imaging survey in Exmouth

The hillside behind the front is Regency and Victorian villa stock, solid wall with ornate detailing and bay roofs, where heat loss follows the same pattern as anywhere of that age: bridging at reveals, junctions and rendered chimney stacks where cracked render lets damp into the brickwork behind. Further back at Withycombe Raleigh and Littleham the housing shifts to inter-war and post-war cavity suburbs, a different and generally more straightforward thermal picture of loft depth and cavity condition.

The seafront apartment blocks are the third and most distinct building type in the town: flat roofs, often single ply or felt membranes over the living space below, with rendered parapets hiding a gutter that nobody can see into from any window. A thermal read on these is as much about the roof build-up holding moisture as it is about heat loss through the walls, and the two questions get answered by two different services on this site.

Exmouth takes more direct weather than almost anywhere else in this coverage area, a two mile open seafront with nothing between the town and the Channel. Salt-laden south-westerlies drive rain into every reveal and joint on the exposed elevations several times a winter, and a wall that stays wet longer than it should loses heat faster than the same wall dry, in the same way as at Topsham but with a harder wind behind it.

For the holiday let and second home stock, which is a meaningful share of the town's housing, there is a separate practical problem: an owner who is not there day to day has no way of noticing a cold room or a rising bill until a tenant mentions it, by which point a gap that would have been a quick fix has usually been quietly costing money for a full winter.

A large share of Exmouth surveys are booked by owners who live elsewhere. Nobody needs to be present on the day, a lawful launch point and permission to be there is enough, and the report lands by email within 48 hours wherever the owner happens to be.

For the seafront blocks specifically, a mapped thermal image of a parapet gutter or a suspected wet patch is also the fastest way to settle a disagreement between leaseholders about whether a service charge is being spent in the right place.

Out towards Orcombe Point and Sandy Bay, the housing changes again to a scatter of chalets and holiday parks built for a different market to the seafront flats or the hillside villas, often with thinner walls and roofs than either, put up quickly for seasonal use rather than year-round living. A thermal survey on this kind of building tends to find larger, more straightforward heat loss patterns than the villas or blocks nearer the marina, simply because the original specification allowed for less insulation in the first place, not because anything has since failed.