Drone surveys in Exmouth, flown by the surveyor who writes them

Exmouth is about twenty minutes from Exeter down the A376, so getting there is never the issue. Getting a flyable window is. This is the most exposed town in the coverage and the wind decides the diary more than the calendar does.

Bookings here are usually made against the forecast rather than against a preferred date, and a survey put back a few days because the sea breeze got up is a survey that produces usable imagery instead of a set of frames taken while the aircraft was fighting to hold position.

Salt laden south westerlies come in off the sea unbroken across two miles of open front. Two things follow. Fixings and flashings corrode faster here than anywhere inland, and wind uplift on ridges and verges is a recurring problem rather than a storm-year event.

Uplift is the fault worth understanding because it explains most of what a survey finds in Exmouth. Wind flowing over a roof creates suction at the ridge and along the verge, and it works at any unit that is not mechanically held. Mortar bedded ridge tiles that were sound for thirty years reach a point where the bond has gone, and after that each gale moves them a little further. From the ground the roof looks fine. From above you can see the line of the ridge is no longer straight.

The stock spans Regency and Victorian villas on the hillsides, seafront apartment blocks with flat roofs, inter-war and post-war suburbs at Withycombe Raleigh and Littleham on concrete tile, and modern waterside development around the docks. The villas and the seafront blocks are where the interesting work is; the rendered parapets on the front are a category of their own.

A rendered parapet on a seafront block does two jobs badly at once. It takes the full weather on its outer face and it hides whatever is happening on the roof behind it. Cracked render lets water into the wall head, and a parapet gutter behind it silts up unseen. Both are visible from the air and neither is visible from the promenade.

The flat roofs on the seafront blocks are the other half of that. They are large, they are above occupied flats, and they are inspected almost never. A single overflight tells a managing agent more than a year of reactive callouts, because it shows where water actually sits rather than where the last leak came through.

The ground rises steeply behind the town towards Orcombe Point and the red cliffs, so hillside properties look out over everything below them and take wind accordingly. The marina and docks quarter sits at the other extreme, low and enclosed, where the wind is fickle rather than strong.

Sandy Bay and the seafront are busy for a good part of the year and the beach itself is public ground. Where a property faces the front, the flight gets planned around where people will actually be, which in practice means early rather than clever.