Drone survey in Newton Abbot

Newton Abbot grew as a railway town and the housing shows it. There are Victorian terraces in very large numbers, an ornate town centre of the same period, then post-war estates and substantial modern development at Houghton Barton and Wolborough. The terraces are the ones that generate most survey questions.

A terrace roof is a shared object even when the deeds say otherwise. Water crossing a party wall, a valley between two properties, a chimney stack on a boundary: all of those involve the neighbour whether anybody wants them to or not. Photographs of the whole run rather than one house are what make those conversations possible, and they are only available from above.

The town sits on the flat floodplain where the Teign becomes tidal, ringed by hills, with the Bovey basin clay workings to the north west. It is low-lying and damp, with mist off the river, so shaded slate holds moss and lichen readily.

It is less wind-exposed than the coast, but the estuary funnels easterlies in winter and those arrive at the fronts of buildings detailed for something else. The combination of persistent damp and occasional hard easterly weather is what wears the north and east facing slopes here.

Newton Abbot carries a lot of large-span industrial roofing on its trading estates, and that is a separate kind of survey. Profiled sheet, rooflights that have gone brittle with age, parapet gutters full of silt and plant units sitting on frames that were fitted long after the roof was built.

Nobody should be walking on an ageing rooflight to check it, which is exactly why aerial photography suits this stock. An overhead pass shows the drainage pattern of a whole roof, the state of every light and where water is standing, without anybody setting foot on the deck.

On the housing it is usually a repair quote that needs checking, or a party wall question that has turned into a disagreement. On the commercial stock it is more often a landlord and tenant matter about who is responsible for what, and a dated record with captions is what stops that going round in circles.

Racecourse week and the market days affect timing rather than substance. Flights around the town centre are planned for quieter hours because it is simpler, not because the rules require it.

North west of the town the Bovey basin clay workings and Stover give a landscape of industrial ground, woodland and scattered properties, and a good share of the local commercial work sits out that way rather than in the centre.

For a TQ12 building on the clay, ground conditions are worth mentioning. Access for plant is poor in winter on soft ground, which is the same practical argument that applies on the Levels and on the Culm Measures: an aircraft does not need to reach the building at all.

The racecourse and the estuary side of the town are flatter and easier, and most of the residential work there is straightforward to arrange with a day's notice.