Drone survey in Bridgwater

Bridgwater sits very low on the tidal Parrett at the edge of the Levels, and the ground is wet. That matters for a survey in a way it does not in a hill town, because a damp problem in a building here has more than one possible source and a roof survey answers only part of the question.

That is worth being plain about. Photographs of a roof can rule the roof in or out. They cannot say anything about rising damp, a failed damp proof course or ground water, and a report that pretends otherwise would be misleading. On the Levels the sensible use of a survey is to eliminate one cause properly rather than to explain everything.

With the Bristol Channel a short distance north west and the Levels flat in every direction, wind arrives unbroken. There is nothing to slow it and nothing to break it up, so exposure across the town is fairly uniform and fairly high.

On Victorian brick terraces that shows at the verges and the chimneys. On the large post-war estates it shows at ridges. On the industrial estates it shows in the fixings of profiled metal sheet, which is where a survey pays for itself because a loose sheet is a serious matter.

The industrial estates carry profiled metal and single ply roofing on a large scale, and the Hinkley Point workforce has driven rapid modern housing expansion alongside it. Both ends of that are survey work of quite different kinds.

For the industrial buildings the case for flying is the same as everywhere: large area, fragile coverings, active use below and a real drainage picture that only makes sense from above.

The wet, low ground affects plant access for much of the winter, which is one of the reasons an aerial inspection is popular here. An aircraft does not care whether a yard is soft.

Flying itself is straightforward: flat ground, open sites and plenty of room, with the docks and the river as features to plan around rather than obstacles.

The docks and the river frontage include older industrial and warehouse buildings, some of them on made ground beside the Parrett. Those combine large roofs with structures that have settled over a long period, and settlement shows in roof geometry before it shows anywhere else.

For a TA6 commercial owner that is a useful early indicator. A ridge that is no longer straight or a gutter that has developed a fall in the wrong direction is worth knowing about, and both are visible from above and invisible from inside the building.

Bridgwater Bay and the Levels around the town also mean that anything on the outskirts is likely to be on open ground with no shelter, which is a factor in both maintenance and scheduling.