Thermal imaging survey in Budleigh Salterton

Budleigh Salterton's housing stock skews older and less altered than most of the towns on this list: substantial Victorian and Edwardian villas on generous plots, and a good number of bungalows on the higher ground behind the town, built for a retirement population that tends to hold a property for decades rather than renovate it in stages. That is a specific thermal picture: original loft insulation, where it was ever fitted, is often well below what would be installed today, and a solid-wall Edwardian villa that has never had wall insulation considered is a very different prospect to the same house in a town with faster-turning ownership.

Bungalows are worth a specific mention here because they carry proportionally more roof area per square metre of living space than a two-storey house, which means loft insulation quality matters more to the whole building's heat loss than it would on a taller house, and a gap that would be a minor issue upstairs in a villa can be the dominant heat loss route in a bungalow.

The town is open to the south and south-west with no real shelter from the sea, and while the valley sides behind the high street take some of the edge off, salt spray reaches the front rank of housing in winter storms. On an older solid wall that has not been repointed or rendered recently, that salt exposure accelerates the small cracks and open joints that let damp in, and a damp wall is a wall that is quietly losing heat faster than its dry neighbour a street back.

Because much of this housing has been owned by the same family for a long time, a thermal survey here is often the first time anyone has actually looked at the building's heat loss pattern rather than assumed it based on its age, and the finding is as often reassuring, a sound wall that simply looks its age, as it is a genuine gap.

Detached villas on generous plots are straightforward to fly around compared with a terrace, with a clear stand-off distance on most sides, and a dawn flight after a cold, still night gives the clearest read on both the villa stock and the bungalows on the higher ground.

Where a property backs onto the Otter Estuary Nature Reserve, flight planning accounts for the reserve boundary as a matter of course, the same way any sensitive site nearby would be checked before a date is confirmed.

The Octagon, at the heart of the town centre, sits among some of the oldest commercial buildings in Budleigh Salterton, solid wall like the villas behind it but with a mix of ground floor uses that can mean inconsistent heating patterns from one unit to the next. Along the East Devon Way, where the town gives way to open coast path, the last row of houses faces the same salt exposure as the seafront properties further along the coast at Sidmouth and Exmouth, and a survey there is planned with that comparable exposure in mind.