Drone inspection services in Bideford

The old town rises very steeply from the quay, and the commercial buildings on those streets are built into the slope. Getting a tower or a platform to any of them means a road closure, a specialist frame, or in several cases simply accepting that it cannot be done from the street at all. That is the reason a lot of the older commercial and mixed-use stock in this town has photographic gaps going back years.

Slate hanging is common on the exposed elevations here, and it is common precisely because of the driving rain rather than as a stylistic choice. It also means the elevation, not just the roof, is a maintenance item: slipped or missing slates on a hung wall let water into the fabric behind, and from ground level on a steep street you cannot see the top two thirds of it.

Recording both roof and elevation from the air, in one pass, covers what the gradient has been hiding. On a hung elevation the camera picks up individual slipped slates and the nail sickness pattern around them, which is exactly the detail that decides whether an area needs patching or re-hanging.

Atlantic weather comes in from the west up the Torridge, salt rides on it, and the estuary funnels wind along the valley. On commercial stock that shows first in the fixings and the flashings, then in the coatings, then in the substrate.

The shipbuilding and marine buildings towards Appledore and along the quay are the extreme case: large steel structures in permanent salt exposure, where corrosion at connections and at the base of stanchions and frames is a live structural interest rather than a cosmetic one. Photographing those at height is far safer and far cheaper than reaching them.

For the general commercial stock, the useful discipline is watching the west and south-west faces specifically. Those take the driving rain, and on most buildings here they will be a full generation ahead of the sheltered faces in terms of wear.

The modern estate stock east of the town is straightforward by comparison: portal frame, insulated panel, box gutters, generous yards, and room to work. The value there is less about access and more about frequency, because these buildings are the ones actually carrying the local economy and an unplanned roof failure closes a business rather than a room.

A programme across a handful of units on the same estate takes a morning and produces a single comparable set of records, which is a very different proposition to arranging access to each of them separately.