Drone services in Paignton

Paignton sits on the flat middle of the bay, which makes access easy and exposure worse. Sheltered from the prevailing wind by the bay, it is fully open to easterly weather, and the flat ground offers nothing at all to break it when it arrives.

Salt spray reaches several streets back from the front, so the corrosion question is not confined to the seafront row the way it is in a town with rising ground behind it.

The failure pattern is accordingly wide rather than concentrated. Damage after an easterly turns up across a large area rather than on one exposed rank.

There is a seasonal shape to it as well. The town is busy from Easter to September and quiet either side, and almost everything that involves access or disruption is easier arranged in the shoulder months.

The large stock of guest houses and holiday flats brings a particular kind of roof: an Edwardian or inter-war original with successive flat-roofed extensions added at the back over decades.

Those extensions are where the water problems concentrate. Ponding, a splitting seam, a failed upstand where the flat roof meets the original wall, and an outlet silted up with grit. All of it invisible from the garden, all of it obvious from above.

Ownership is often at a distance too, with a managing agent or an owner living elsewhere, so nobody has actually looked at the back of the building in years.

Between seasons is the useful time to check, which in practice means October and March rather than the middle of the summer when nobody wants a survey happening.

The Edwardian and inter-war seaside terraces and semis are the bulk of the housing, mostly concrete interlocking tile with slate on the older stock and clay pantile mixed in.

The recurring findings are ridge bedding, verge mortar and slipped tiles on the exposed slope, none of it dramatic and all of it cheaper caught early than caught by a ceiling.

Post-war estates and the newer housing west towards Marldon are conventional and quick, and generate the same short list.

Chimney stacks on the older terraces are the other regular finding. They are tall relative to the buildings, they take the easterly directly, and the failure is nearly always in the bedding or the flaunching rather than the brickwork.

Goodrington, the pier and the long beach make this a straightforward town for visual work, and holiday businesses here rely on images that show a whole site rather than one corner of it.

Zoo, park and venue sites are the other regular subject, where the thing being sold is the scale and the layout of the place, which reads only from height.

Flights near the beach in summer are planned around where people actually are, which usually means early morning rather than the middle of an August afternoon.

Caravan and holiday parks around the edges of the town add a further category, where the useful output is an overview of the whole site and its layout rather than any single roof.