Drone survey in Seaton

There is a large stock of post-war bungalows on the slopes behind Seaton, along with holiday flats and chalets and modern estates towards Colyford. Bungalow roofs are shallow, and the front of the town is only a few metres from the beach.

Under wind pressure a shallow pitch sheds water poorly: rain is driven up the slope rather than running down it, and it finds its way under laps and around flashings that would be perfectly adequate in a sheltered position. That mechanism explains most of the water ingress complaints on this stock, and it is the reason the answer is usually a detail rather than a whole covering.

Bungalow extensions here almost always brought a flat roof with them, in felt or later in single ply. Those are the roofs nobody has ever seen, because they are behind a house that has no upstairs window to look out of.

An overhead photograph is the only practical way to look at one without getting on it. What it shows is where water sits, whether the falls work, the state of the upstand where the flat meets the wall of the house, and whether the outlet is doing anything at all.

Seaton sits at the mouth of the Axe with a shingle beach, the wide estuary and its marshes to the east, and the landslip woodland of the Undercliff to the west. That is a lot of open ground, which makes flying straightforward away from the front itself.

The wetlands are a habitat and flights are kept clear of them. The tramway along the estuary is another local feature to plan around rather than an obstruction.

Directly exposed to the south with the beach at the door, the front row of properties in Seaton takes salt and gale-driven rain as an ordinary condition. Rendered parapets on the seafront blocks are a specific local detail that needs looking at, since a parapet failure shows inside long before it shows outside.

For owners the practical question is usually whether a recurring damp problem is the roof or something else. A survey answers the roof half of that quickly, which narrows what else needs investigating.

Behind the seafront the ground rises towards Colyford and the modern estates, and exposure drops off quickly with distance from the beach. Two EX12 properties half a mile apart can be in quite different conditions.

That gradient is the first thing worth establishing on an enquiry here, because it decides whether the survey is looking for salt and wind damage or for the slower inland problems of damp and growth. Both are common in this town and they need looking at differently.

The tramway and the estuary give open ground on the eastern side, and the Undercliff woodland to the west is a landslip landscape that is not a place to be standing near the edge of.