Drone roof survey in Sidmouth

Sidmouth has one of the most complete Regency and early Victorian centres in the South West, and Regency building has a specific characteristic that matters enormously to a roof survey: the drainage is hidden. Behind the rendered parapet and the cornice sits a lead or asphalt lined gutter, and it is not visible from the street, from the garden or from any window in the house.

When one of those gutters blocks, the water does not run down the outside of the building where somebody would notice it. It backs up behind the parapet and goes inward, into the wall head, the wall plate and the ceiling. By the time it shows internally the damage is well established.

The esplanade terraces and the villas up the valley sides carry the same construction, along with ornate ironwork, decorative bargeboards and complex bay roofs that all rely on small lead details staying intact.

Sidmouth sits in a narrow valley at the mouth of the Sid, with Peak Hill to the west and Salcombe Hill to the east both rising well above 150 metres. Wind coming in off the sea is squeezed between them and pushed straight up the town, and the hills either side generate turbulence and downdraughts that a coastal forecast does not describe.

The practical effect is that ridge, hip and verge details take more punishment than the exposure of a flat coastal town would suggest, and they take it from shifting directions rather than a steady prevailing one. Mortar bedding that has been sound for decades tends to let go here in a single bad winter rather than degrade gently.

Salt reaches the esplanade properties hard and the high villas get the wind, so there is no part of the town that is comfortably sheltered, only parts that get different problems.

Getting conventional access to a Sidmouth roof is often expensive for reasons of geometry rather than height. Properties on the valley sides sit on terraced plots with retaining walls, so a scaffold needs additional support and bracing before it even starts going up, and the esplanade terraces have the beach on one side and a busy road on the other.

A flown survey does not care about the gradient. The aircraft reaches the parapet gutter, the back slope and the far side of the stack at the same cost as the front elevation, which is the specific thing that makes this town worth surveying from the air.

For the hidden gutters it is the only practical way to look at all. Nothing else short of a cherry picker gets a camera above a Regency parapet, and a cherry picker on the esplanade in season is not a simple booking.