Drone roof survey in Axminster

Axminster sits on high ground above the Axe valley with the land dropping away on three sides. That position, which is why the town is there at all, means there is no prevailing wind direction to design around. Weather arrives from the west up the valley, from the south off the coast eight miles away, and from the north over the hills, and roofs take loading from all of it.

Ridge, hip and verge details are where that shows. A roof in a sheltered valley develops problems slowly on the exposed side. A roof on a hilltop develops them everywhere at once, and mortar bedding that would last forty years in Ottery St Mary tends to want attention here sooner.

The valley below also pushes damp air up over the town, so the drying conditions are worse than the exposure would suggest.

The domestic stock is Georgian and Victorian around Trinity Square and the Minster church, mostly natural slate and clay plain tile, with post-war estates on the higher ground running to concrete interlocking tile.

Then there is the industrial legacy. Axminster has former mill and carpet factory buildings with large span roofs, and buildings of that type carry problems that domestic roofs do not: long runs of valley gutter, north light glazing, corroded sheet fixings and, in some cases, asbestos cement sheeting that nobody should be walking on under any circumstances.

That last point is worth stating plainly. A survey flown from the air puts no load on a roof at all, which is the only sensible way to assess a fragile covering.

Outside the town the Axe valley is farmland, with farmhouses, barns and agricultural buildings at the end of long tracks. Getting a scaffold lorry to those is a real cost, and in a wet winter on clay ground it is sometimes not possible at all.

A survey visit needs a vehicle to reach the yard and nothing more. Several buildings on a farm can be covered in one flight, which changes the arithmetic on checking outbuildings that would never justify a scaffold on their own.

For a farm, the corrugated sheet roofs on the outbuildings are usually the priority. Fixings rust, sheets start to lift at the corner, and a sheet that comes off in a gale is a serious hazard to livestock and people.

The River Axe loops around the town below the hill, and the water meadows along it flood in winter, which is one more reason a scaffold contractor prefers to work here in summer rather than take the risk in January. Whether the aircraft is over a farmhouse roof or a boundary hedge, meadow or hard standing changes nothing about how the survey is flown, which is not true of a scaffold lorry looking for solid ground to stand on.