Thermal imaging survey in Plymouth

Much of central Plymouth was rebuilt after the war, and that history shows up directly in the roofscape: flat-roofed commercial and residential blocks dominate the centre in a way that is unusual for a South West city of this size, alongside surviving Victorian terraces in the Hoe, Stoke and Mutley areas that carry the same solid-wall thermal picture found in older towns across this coverage area. Extensive post-war estates fill out the wider city, and modern waterfront apartments at Royal William Yard and Millbay bring the newest construction standard into the mix.

That spread means a Plymouth booking often starts by establishing which of these three broad building types a property belongs to, flat-roofed post-war block, Victorian terrace, or modern apartment, because the likely thermal finding and the right service to book differ meaningfully between them.

Plymouth is open to the Sound and to south-westerly gales coming straight off the Channel, and salt-laden wind reaches well inland across the city rather than staying confined to the immediate waterfront, with the exposed high suburbs at Crownhill and Southway catching the weather almost as hard as the harbourside itself. For the flat-roofed post-war stock, that exposure is a moisture question as much as a heat-loss one, wind-driven rain finding its way to parapet gutters and roof edges that are harder to inspect than a pitched roof, which is exactly the kind of finding the damp and flat roof service on this site is built to catch.

For the Victorian terraces, the pattern is closer to any other solid-wall town in this coverage area, bridging at party walls and window reveals, complicated in Plymouth's case by a actually exposed, salt-laden climate that keeps those walls wetter for longer after weather than a more sheltered inland terrace would experience.

For flat-roofed blocks, an evening flight after a bright day is usually the right window, giving the roof time to show whether any area is holding moisture as it cools. For the Victorian terraces and modern apartments, a dawn flight after a cold, clear night is the more useful read.

Multiple addresses across the city, useful for a managing agent with a small portfolio, are often flown in a single visit where they sit reasonably close together.

Around Devonport Dockyard and the Barbican and Sutton Harbour, the housing mix includes some of the city's oldest surviving stock alongside more recent waterfront conversion, a actually wide spread of construction ages within a short walk, similar in principle to Exeter's mixed centre but on a larger, more exposed scale given Plymouth's position on the Sound. A survey covering a property in this part of the city is planned with that mix in mind, checking which specific building type is in question rather than assuming a single pattern across the whole harbourside.