Drone inspection services in Exeter

Exeter's commercial stock is not one thing. Marsh Barton grew from the 1960s onwards on the flood plain south of the city and much of its older run is exactly what you would expect from that period: shallow-pitch profiled sheet, long unbroken runs into steel box gutters, translucent rooflight strips that have gone brittle and yellow, and trade counter frontages bolted on later. Sowton, out towards the M5, is largely 1980s and 1990s, with more insulated composite panel and more office frontage. Matford is newer again, and its roofs carry far more plant.

That spread matters to anybody holding buildings across more than one of them, because the same maintenance budget is being asked to cover three different failure patterns. The oldest stock fails at fixings and laps. The middle generation fails at panel joints and at the sealant round penetrations. The newest fails where the plant deck has been added to since handover and nobody updated the drawing.

Inspecting from the air lets one visit cover all three without three different access solutions. There is no tower to hire for Marsh Barton, no permit exercise for the Sowton unit with a fragile rooflight run, and no argument about whether the Matford plant deck has a compliant walkway before anyone can get to the thing that needs looking at.

Exeter sits at the tidal head of the Exe on a low ridge, and the valley holds damp air. Rainfall runs above the England average and north-facing slopes dry slowly, which is why organic growth is so persistent here on anything shaded. On a domestic roof that is a cosmetic nuisance. On a commercial box gutter it is the start of a blockage.

The sequence is always the same and always slow. Moss and grit wash off the sheets into the gutter, the fall was marginal to begin with, silt builds against the outlet, and one heavy autumn the gutter runs over the internal side of the eaves instead of the external one. By the time it shows on a ceiling tile the insulation above it has been wet for a season.

A visit in early autumn, before the leaf fall, catches that at the stage where it is a clean and clear job. That is the single most valuable thing an aerial inspection does on Exeter stock, and it is the reason a lot of the planned programmes on the estates here are pinned to September and October.

Almost every unit on these estates is trading, and the yards are working yards. The practical answer is a small cordon on hard standing away from the delivery route, a short window agreed with whoever runs the site, and a note out to occupiers beforehand so nobody rings a helpdesk to report a drone.

Where a unit backs onto the Exeter to Exmouth line, onto the A379 or onto residential streets on the Alphington side, the standoff distance goes up and the camera does more of the work. That is worked out at quoting stage against the A2 Certificate of Competency rather than discussed in a yard on the morning.