Drone services in Exeter

Exeter sends more varied work than anywhere else on this list, because it is really three places at once. There is the old core on its ridge above the Exe, Georgian and Victorian terraces with slate and clay double roman roofs packed tight enough that no ladder gets near half of them. There is the ring of post-war semis and estates where the concrete interlocking tiles are now old enough to be shedding their bedding mortar. And there is the constant new-build growth east towards Pinhoe and Cranbrook, which brings a completely different set of questions.

So the first job on an Exeter enquiry is usually working out which of those three you are ringing from, because a listed frontage near the cathedral and a four year old house at the edge of the city need different flights, different heights and, quite often, different services altogether.

Rainfall here sits above the England average and the valley holds the damp, which is why north-facing slopes in Exeter stay wet long after the sun is out and organic growth becomes a fixture rather than a season. From above that is easy to read: the moss line tells you where the slope never dries, and the pattern of it often marks out exactly where a gutter has been overflowing quietly for years.

Marsh Barton is the other half of the city's workload. A trading estate that size is all large-span flat and shallow roofs, rooflights, ducting and rooftop plant, none of which anyone inspects until water arrives inside. Managing agents and unit owners get far more out of a set of overhead photographs than they do out of a man on a cherry picker looking at one corner.

Exeter Airport sits just east of the city, so a chunk of the eastern side falls inside controlled airspace and that is checked before any price is quoted rather than discovered on the morning. It is not a blanket problem and most addresses are straightforward, but it does decide what height a flight can work at, and on a small number of sites it decides whether the flight happens at all.

Being based in the city means travel is not a factor on price, and it means an Exeter job can often be fitted around the weather at short notice, which matters more than the diary does when the useful window is one clear morning between two wet weeks.

Split roughly, the enquiries here divide into homeowners with a specific worry, letting and managing agents with a portfolio to keep on top of, and commercial occupiers on the estates with a flat roof nobody has looked at. The first group wants an answer this week; the second wants a routine; the third usually rings once water has already arrived.

The city also sends a steady trickle of enquiries that turn out not to need an aircraft at all, and those get said out loud rather than quietly turned into a booking. A blocked gully at ground level, a wet wall with no roof involvement, a boundary question that needs a solicitor: none of those is improved by photographs from the air, and being told so on the phone costs nobody anything.