Thermal imaging survey in Sidmouth

Sidmouth's seafront and town centre form one of the most complete Regency townscapes in the South West, rendered and painted elevations, ornate ironwork, and roof geometries that were architecturally showy rather than straightforward even when new: parapet gutters hidden behind decorative frontages, lead-lined valleys between bay roofs, and solid walls finished in lime render rather than left as bare masonry. Heat moves through that render and masonry as one system, and a crack in the render is as much a thermal problem as a structural one, because it is the point where damp gets in and the wall's insulating value drops.

Further up the valley sides, later Victorian and Edwardian villas give way to more recent housing, and Sidford and Sidbury carry a meaningful stock of post-war building where the construction and the thermal picture are closer to a typical inland cavity suburb than to the Regency core three-quarters of a mile away.

Sidmouth sits in a steep-sided valley at the mouth of the Sid, hemmed in by Peak Hill and Salcombe Hill, both rising well over 150 metres either side. That geography funnels wind straight up the town from the sea and creates turbulent, gusting conditions around the taller Regency roofs and chimneys, which drives rain into render joints on some elevations far harder than a straightforward coastal exposure would suggest from the map alone.

The practical effect for a thermal survey is that the esplanade properties and the valley-side villas can show quite different reading conditions on the same day, so the flight plan accounts for both rather than treating the town as a single exposure.

On this style of building, a thermal survey pays particular attention to render and parapet lines rather than just the roof slope itself, because that is where the Regency construction actually loses heat, and a warm patch tracing a crack in the render tells a more useful story here than one in the middle of an otherwise sound wall.

A dawn flight after a still, cold night, timed to avoid the valley's characteristic gusting, is the usual choice for the older core, with the Sidford and Sidbury post-war stock flown to the same general rule as any inland cavity suburb.

Connaught Gardens, tucked into the cliff above the western end of the esplanade, sits close to some of the town's most exposed Regency and Victorian properties, where the render and masonry take the worst of both the sea wind and the valley's characteristic gusting in the same storm. A short walk inland, the terraced streets rising away from the seafront are more sheltered but still solid wall throughout, and a survey covering several addresses on the same street tends to show a consistent pattern rather than an isolated one, useful evidence for a residents' association comparing notes.