Drone roof inspection in Salcombe

Salcombe's houses climb the hillside above the harbour in tiers, which means a lot of them are reached by steps, private paths or a driveway that itself sits at an angle. A scaffold tower needs a level base and a route to deliver poles and boards to that base, and on a slope this steep, especially on the upper tiers with the best harbour views, that route often does not exist without cutting into a neighbour's garden or retaining wall.

A drone removes the question of a route entirely. It can launch from the harbour front, a lower road, or any clear patch below the property and climb straight to roof height, regardless of how the plot itself is terraced or retained. For a house stacked three or four levels up the hillside with no vehicle access to the upper garden, that is often the only way to get a scaffold free look at the roof at all.

A significant number of Salcombe's more recent houses are architect designed second homes with flat roofs, roof terraces, large glazed elements and standing seam metal detailing, built to make the most of the view. These roofs are usually low pitched or flat, which means the failure points, membrane joints, parapet upstands, glazing seals, sit close together and are hard to inspect properly without walking across the finished terrace surface itself, something owners are understandably reluctant to have happen.

A drone photographs a flat roof and a terrace surface from directly overhead without a boot ever landing on it, which matters when the terrace is finished in an expensive material chosen for how it looks rather than how much foot traffic it can take. The Mavic 4 Pro's camera resolves detail on a membrane joint or a glazing seal clearly enough to spot an early problem without anyone needing to be up there checking it by hand.

Many of Salcombe's houses are second homes, occupied for part of the year, which means there is often nobody on site to give a scaffold crew access, agree a start date in person, or deal with the disruption of a tower going up outside a house nobody is currently living in. Coordinating that from a distance adds delay to a job that a resident owner could otherwise sort out in a phone call.

Salcombe is also one of the most exposed towns in the network, open to the south with wind driven rain arriving close to horizontal off Bolt Head, which is exactly the weather that finds a weakness in a glazing seal or a standing seam metal joint fastest. A drone flight can be arranged and flown without the owner needing to be present at all, with the written report landing within 48 hours wherever they actually are at the time.