Drone roof survey in Budleigh Salterton

Budleigh has a housing stock that is unusual for a coastal town. There is relatively little of the packed terrace you get in Exmouth or Sidmouth and a great deal of substantial detached property sitting in its own grounds, much of it Victorian and Edwardian, with bungalows filling the higher ground behind the town.

Long ownerships are the defining feature. Houses here are held for decades rather than traded, and the practical effect on roofs is that a great many of them have not had anything done to them for a long time. That is not a criticism of the owners: the roofs are often good, but a slate roof at seventy years old is at the stage where nail fatigue starts producing slipped slates one at a time.

The larger plots also mean more roof than the front elevation suggests. Coach houses, garden rooms, garages and Victorian conservatory roofs all add planes and junctions that never get looked at.

Head inland from the town towards East Budleigh and Otterton and thatch becomes common. Thatch has a clear maintenance logic: the ridge wears out long before the main coat does, and a ridge that has gone soft lets water into the coat beneath it, which then rots from the inside where nobody can see it.

The only way to inspect a thatched ridge conventionally is a scaffold or a long ladder against a soft, sloping surface, which is why it does not get inspected. Flown imagery shows ridge wear, netting condition, the state of the spar work and any vermin damage clearly, and it does it in twenty minutes without anybody going near the roof.

For a thatched property, a survey every couple of years is a cheap way of knowing whether the ridge has three years left or eight, which is the number that lets an owner budget rather than react.

Budleigh faces south with no shelter from the sea, but the valley sides either side of the Otter take some of the edge off compared with a fully open front like Exmouth. Salt still reaches the front ranks of housing in a winter gale, and the properties on the higher ground catch the wind coming over the top.

The Otter estuary and its reed beds on the eastern side keep the air damp, which shows up as heavy organic growth on north-facing slopes. Moss on a slate roof is not itself a defect, but moss holds water against the slate through the winter and packs into the head lap, and on an old roof that is enough to make the difference.

The bungalow stock on the slopes behind the town has its own issue: shallow pitches, often with concrete tiles or a felt flat roof over an extension, where wind driven rain can be pushed back up against the fall.