Drone roof survey in Teignmouth

Almost every roof detail in Devon is built with the prevailing south-westerly in mind. Teignmouth faces east into the Channel, and its worst weather arrives up the coast from the east, which is precisely the direction nobody detailed for.

The practical consequence is that the elevation which has been quietly weathering for decades without much attention is the one taking the punishment, and a lap, a verge or a flashing that would be adequate on the sheltered side is being tested hard.

The sea wall carrying the main railway line regularly overtops in easterly gales, and the spray that comes with that reaches well beyond the front row of buildings.

That eastern exposure is also why Teignmouth's roofs are worth revisiting more often than a similar building a few miles inland. A detail that held for thirty years facing south-west can start failing within a handful of seasons once it is finally exposed to weather it was never built to shed, and the point at which that starts happening is rarely obvious until water has already found its way in.

The seafront and the streets behind it are Regency and Georgian: rendered elevations, parapets, bow fronts and slate hidden behind the parapet line where nobody can see it. Many of these buildings have been divided into flats, which multiplies the number of people with an interest in the roof and reduces the number who feel responsible for it.

Behind the parapet sits a lined gutter, and it drains through outlets that are easy to block and impossible to inspect from any window. When one blocks, the water goes into the building rather than down the front of it.

Above the town the Victorian villas climb the slopes towards Bishopsteignton road, and post-war housing fills the higher ground at Broadmeadow. Both are more conventional, though the exposure remains.

The land rises sharply behind the town, so many properties sit on terraced plots with retaining structures, and access for any conventional scaffold is limited by both gradient and the width of the streets.

Teignmouth is also a working port with the docks on the estuary side, and the mix of commercial and residential buildings in a small area means large flat roofs and small steep ones sitting next to each other.

A flown survey handles both in the same visit and, on the seafront, gets a camera above a parapet without needing a cherry picker on the esplanade in the middle of the season.

Across the estuary at Shaldon, reached by the bridge or the passenger ferry, the character changes again: a smaller, older settlement under the red sandstone headland known as The Ness, sheltered from the worst of the easterly swell by the shape of the estuary mouth but still exposed to anything coming straight up the Teign. Properties there sit close enough to Teignmouth to be covered in the same visit, which matters because the two banks of the estuary rarely see the same weather on the same day, and a survey booked around one forecast can usually still fly the other.