Drone survey in Cranbrook

Cranbrook was begun in 2011 and it is still going. Everything here is twenty first century: estate housing, terraces and apartment blocks in brick, render and timber frame, with a district heating network running from a central energy centre. There is no Victorian stock, no cob and no thatch, which makes it the least typical place in this whole coverage area and changes what a survey is looking for.

New does not mean nothing to find. It means the findings are different. Instead of washed out mortar and slipped slates you are looking at how the dry verges were fixed, whether the ridge system was clipped as the manufacturer intended, how the flashings were dressed around the solar panels, and whether a single ply flat roof on an apartment block or a school building was laid with the falls it needed.

Most new homes carry a structural warranty, and there is a period at the start of it when the builder is responsible for putting defects right. That period runs out quietly, and the roof is the part of the house nobody checks while it is running.

A survey before that point is worth more than one after it, because a photograph of a poorly fixed verge is a conversation with a developer rather than a bill. On an estate that is still being built, it is also useful that the same issue often appears on several plots, so neighbours comparing photographs tend to get further than one owner arguing alone.

The town sits on an open farmland plateau east of the Clyst valley, gently rolling and largely treeless where the newest phases are still going up. That makes take off easy, with plenty of clear ground and few mature trees in the way, but it also means wind runs across the site with nothing to slow it. A day that is flyable in a sheltered Exeter street can be marginal here.

Exeter Airport, Skypark and the science park are immediately to the south west. Airspace planning is a first step on a Cranbrook job rather than a formality, and it is the reason a date here is offered with a few days of notice rather than for tomorrow morning.

Mostly for evidence against a developer or a warranty provider, and occasionally for the opposite reason: to show that the roof is fine and the damp patch in the bedroom is coming from somewhere else entirely. Both are useful outcomes and both are quicker to establish from above than from a ladder against a house on a narrow plot.

The other local use is the sale. Cranbrook stock turns over relatively quickly, and a buyer who has been told the estate is new will still want to see the roof rather than assume it. Photographs settle that in an afternoon.