Drone roof inspection in Exmouth

Exmouth's two miles of seafront are lined with Regency villas and apartment blocks several storeys high, sitting directly above a promenade that is busy for most of the year. Standing a scaffold tower on the seafront side of one of these buildings usually means closing off part of the prom, and getting that agreed with the council is its own process before any roof work can even start. It is slow, it is visible to every passer by, and it is disruptive to a stretch of town that depends on people walking along it.

A drone survey removes the need for any of that. It launches from the building's own forecourt or a nearby side street and flies straight up the seafront elevation, photographing the roofline, the parapets and the flat sections at close range without a single cone or barrier going down on the prom. For a management company responsible for several seafront blocks, avoiding a promenade closure on each one is a real saving in time and hassle, even before the roof itself is considered.

Behind the seafront, the ground rises steeply towards Orcombe Point and the red cliffs, and a lot of the Victorian and Regency villas here sit on sloping plots with terraced gardens. A scaffold base needs level, stable ground, and on a hillside garden that usually means bringing in extra staging just to get the tower square before any roof access is even possible. It adds cost and time to what should be a straightforward inspection.

Flying instead sidesteps the slope altogether. The drone does not care whether the ground below is flat, terraced or falling away at an angle, it simply climbs to the height it needs and holds position over the ridge. For a villa roof with a complicated pitch, several dormers and a chimney stack right at the highest point of the plot, that is often the fastest way to get a clear look at every face without weeks of ground preparation first.

Exmouth takes salt laden south westerlies straight off the sea with nothing to break them, and that exposure means fixings, flashings and flat roof coverings around the docks and marina wear faster than they would inland. The newer waterside apartment blocks here often have flat or low pitched roofs with rendered parapets, which is exactly the kind of roof where wind uplift at the edges causes the earliest damage, usually invisible from ground level.

A close drone pass along the parapet line and the roof edge picks up lifted flashing or a starting split in a membrane long before it becomes a leak into the flat below. For a block with several owners and no single person responsible for checking the roof regularly, an inspection that does not need scaffold booked, permits agreed and a contractor on site for a day is the difference between a problem caught early and one that is only found once water is already coming through a ceiling.