Drone roof inspection in Great Torrington

Torrington was built where it was for the view and the drop, not for ease of access, and that is still true of the roofs on it today. The town stands on a bluff above a loop of the Torridge, with the Commons and steep wooded slopes falling away on three sides. A good number of houses back onto that fall, which means a scaffold tower on the garden side needs a base built up and braced on sloping ground before anyone can safely climb it, adding a day of preparation and a second contractor before the actual work even starts.

The centre is no easier. The Georgian and Victorian buildings around the square and the terraced cottages behind them sit on streets that were laid out for horses and carts, not scaffold lorries. Getting poles, boards and a tower base down into the old part of town, then finding somewhere to store them for the days a job takes, competes with parking, deliveries and the everyday business of a working market town. None of that stops a drone getting airborne from a clear patch of pavement or a nearby car park.

Once in the air, the Mavic 4 Pro's 100 megapixel Hasselblad camera closes in on ridge lines, valleys, chimney stacks and flashing detail from angles a person standing on a slope simply cannot get to safely. On a hilltop property with a garden that drops away, that matters more than usual, because the ground itself makes the normal routes up onto the roof, a ladder against the eaves or a tower on the lawn, harder to set up level and secure in the first place. Flying removes the ground entirely from the problem.

The Mavic 2 Enterprise Advanced carries a 640 by 512 radiometric thermal camera as well, which is useful on the older housing stock around the square and on outbuildings with corrugated metal roofs, where a straightforward visual pass does not always tell the whole story. Between the two aircraft, a roof on a bluff-top plot gets covered from directions a ladder or a tower could never reach without a great deal of extra work first.

Every survey ends with a written report delivered within 48 hours, not a folder of unsorted images left for the owner to interpret. For a property on the edge of the Commons or on one of Torrington's steeper streets, where a follow-up ladder visit to check something twice is its own small expedition, having the findings written up clearly the first time round matters. Sam Hembury, who carries out the surveys, comes from a construction background and reads a roof the way a builder does, not just a photographer.

The operation is CAA registered, holding an Operator ID and Flyer ID, an A2 Certificate of Competency, and full Coverdrone insurance for commercial work. On a hilltop town where wind comes at the roof from every direction because there is nothing around to break it, that matters for anyone wondering whether flying a drone this close to their home is being done properly. No scaffolding goes up. No ladder goes against the gutter. The price is fixed before anything is booked.