Drone services in Dawlish

Most of Devon is built for weather arriving from the south-west. Dawlish gets hit from the south-east, which throws sea water over the rail wall and drives rain against elevations that were detailed on the assumption it would never come from that direction. The result is a town where failures cluster in places the original builders did not expect.

The clifftop bungalow estates take the wind unbroken. Shallow pitches shed water poorly once wind pressure gets under them, flat felt roofs on extensions lift at the edges, and ridge and verge failures after a gale season are common enough that a lot of local enquiries arrive in the same fortnight.

A large share of the work here ends up attached to a claim, and claims turn on evidence rather than description. What helps is a set of dated photographs showing the damage while it is fresh, taken close enough to show the failure itself and wide enough to show where on the building it sits.

That is a slightly different job from a condition survey, and there is a sibling site set up around it specifically. Either way the flight is the same afternoon's work; it is the write-up that changes, because a loss adjuster reads a document differently from an owner.

The older core around The Lawn and Dawlish Water is Regency and Victorian, with slate and rendered parapets, tucked into a narrow valley cut through red sandstone. Access there is tight and the buildings are tall relative to the street, which is the classic case for photographing rather than scaffolding.

Out at Dawlish Warren the stock is newer and the setting is a sandspit and nature reserve, so holiday accommodation and caravan sites make up a lot of it. Those generate a different kind of enquiry again, usually pictures for a website and an overview of a site nobody can photograph properly from inside it.

Wind is the limiting factor here more often than rain. A day that is fine in Exeter can be unflyable on the Dawlish clifftops, so slots on this stretch stay provisional until a day or two out and get moved without much ceremony when the forecast turns.

After a named storm the opposite problem applies: everybody rings at once and the first workable morning is heavily booked. If the damage is visible and the roof is not letting water in, the useful thing is to get on the list early rather than to wait for a perfect day, because a dated photograph taken in ordinary light is worth considerably more to an insurer than a beautiful one taken three weeks later.