Drone survey in Sidmouth

Sidmouth has an unusually complete Regency and early Victorian core: rendered and painted elevations, ornate ironwork, and roof geometries that are properly intricate. Hips meeting valleys meeting parapets, lead-lined valleys and parapet gutters, and decorative features that were never meant to be walked on.

There are more junctions per square metre on a roof like that than on anything modern, and junctions are where roofs fail. A photographic survey of one of these buildings produces a lot of images because there is a lot to look at, and the value is in the completeness rather than in any single shot.

The town sits in a steep-sided valley at the mouth of the Sid, hemmed in by Peak Hill to the west and Salcombe Hill to the east, both well over 150 metres. The valley funnels wind off the sea straight up the town, and the steep hills either side create turbulent, gusting conditions around ridges and chimneys.

Gusting is worse for a roof than steady wind, because it works fixings loose rather than simply pushing on them. It is also worse for flying, and it is the reason a Sidmouth date is chosen from a forecast with more care than most.

Salt reaches the esplanade properties hard. On a rendered Regency elevation that shows as staining, blown patches and failed paint before it shows as anything structural, and from above you can see how far up the building the pattern reaches.

The outlying villages carry thatch, and the Sidford and Sidbury post-war housing is ordinary suburban stock, so a single flight around this area can cover three quite different kinds of building.

Whether to repair or to renew a section, on a building where doing either properly is expensive and doing it badly is worse. Complete photographic coverage lets a roofer or a surveyor quote against the same information, which on this stock is worth more than it is on a simple estate house.

Consent is often part of it too, given the number of listed and locally significant buildings, and a photographic record makes that process shorter.

Peak Hill and Salcombe Hill rise well over 150 metres on either side of the town, and Connaught Gardens sits on the western end of the front where the ground begins to climb. Properties on those slopes are in a quite different wind regime from the ones on the level esplanade.

An EX10 survey therefore starts by establishing where the building sits in that arrangement. A house part way up Peak Hill is exposed on one side and sheltered on the other, and its roof usually shows that asymmetry clearly from above.

The Jurassic Coast cliffs also mean that flights near the seaward edge are planned with the ground in mind as well as the air, since the cliff line is not a fixed or a safe place to be standing.