Drone inspection services in Axminster

Axminster's larger commercial buildings come from its manufacturing past: former mill and carpet factory ranges, big spans, long roofs, and coverings that include a good deal of metal and asbestos cement. Many have been subdivided, re-let, part-converted or repurposed, which means a single building can have four occupiers, three eras of roof repair and no single person who knows what is up there.

That fragmentation is the real maintenance problem. Where responsibility for a roof is split across leases, the parts nobody owns clearly are the parts that fail, and the failure usually appears in somebody else's demise. A whole-building record cuts through that by showing the roof as one object rather than as a set of lease plans.

Millwey Rise and the newer commercial ground north of the town are more conventional and more recently built, and the findings there are the ordinary estate list rather than anything unusual.

The town sits above the Axe valley with the ground dropping away on three sides, so it is open to wind from every quarter rather than from a prevailing direction. That is unusual on this list and it changes what fails.

Most buildings are detailed with a prevailing wind in mind, which means the sheltered faces get less attention at construction and less again at every subsequent repair. On a hilltop that assumption does not hold, and it is the faces nobody worried about that show damage first: ridge closures, verge trims, flashing laps on the lee side, and edge fixings on flat roofs.

The valley below funnels damp air upward as well, so the exposure comes with wetting rather than instead of it. Exposed ridge and verge details take a beating on both counts.

For the former industrial ranges, the priorities are the cement sheet condition, the roof light runs, the valleys where sections meet, and every point where a later occupier has cut a duct or a flue through a covering that predates them.

For the newer estate stock, the standard pass. In both cases the useful output is a plan of the roof with findings located on it, because on a subdivided building the first question anybody asks is whose part of the roof this is.

The town's position close to the Dorset border and on the main line puts a good deal of transport-related and light industrial stock in and around it, and the buildings that came with the carpet industry are among the largest single roof areas in East Devon. Several have been part-converted to retail, workshop or storage use, which usually means new internal work under an old covering. Where that has happened, the value of an aerial record is that it looks at the covering rather than at the refurbishment beneath it.