Devon · TQ9
Drone services in Totnes
A steep medieval hill town on the Dart, where slate hanging, hidden valleys and party wall abutments make the roofs far more complicated than they look.
A town where the roofs interlock
The dense medieval and Elizabethan core is built up a very steep main street, with jettied and slate-hung frontages and roofs that abut, overlap and drain into one another. From the street it is picturesque; from above it is a network of hidden valleys, party wall junctions and small flat sections that were added at various points over four hundred years.
That is where the water problems live. Very few of them are a failed slate in the middle of a slope. Most are a junction between two buildings of different ages, and working out which side of that junction has failed is close to impossible from the ground.
Debris collects in those valleys as well. The town is well treed and the leaf load in autumn is significant, so a valley that is fine in June can be holding water in November.
Listed status is a live consideration on much of this stock, so a record of what a detail looked like before work started is often wanted by a conservation officer and by whoever is doing the repair.
Slate hanging and what it protects
Slate hanging on walls and dormers is common here, and it exists because of driving rain rather than for decoration. When it starts to fail, it fails from the top edge or at a junction, and the wall behind it is the thing at risk.
Photographs of a hung elevation from a few metres out show the pattern of loss clearly, which is the difference between repairing a section and stripping a wall.
Dormers are the other weak point. A slate-hung dormer cheek takes weather from two directions at once and its junction with the main slope is small, fiddly and almost never visible from the street below.
The estates, the castle and the wider South Hams
Modern estates at Bridgetown and Follaton bring conventional concrete tile work, and the surrounding South Hams farmland brings land parcels, barns and boundaries. Between them they make up a good share of the enquiries that are not about the historic core.
Dartington and the estates nearby add institutional and heritage property, which usually wants a condition record ahead of a repair programme rather than a reaction to a leak.
The market and the independent trade also mean a steady flow of small commercial enquiries, usually a building with a shop below and flats above, and the roof belonging to somebody other than the person who noticed the damp.
The river, the market and the visual side
Totnes sits at the tidal limit of the Dart with the castle above it, and it photographs unusually well from height because the whole town reads as one thing from above and as a series of narrow views from within it.
That makes it a strong town for property and business photography, particularly for the independent trade the town is known for, where the setting is a large part of what is being sold.
River level and tide affect the launch options near the quay, so a flight on that side of town is planned around the water rather than dropped in at whatever hour happens to be free.
Where to go next
Booking something in Totnes
Behind the survey
What people in Totnes are actually buying
CAA registered operator
Operator ID and Flyer ID both held and current with the Civil Aviation Authority, which is the baseline for flying commercially in UK airspace.
A2 Certificate of Competency
The A2 CofC, which allows closer flying to buildings and to people not involved in the flight than the basic qualification does. It does not extend to flying over crowds, and nothing on this site suggests it might.
DJI Mavic 4 Pro
A 100 megapixel Hasselblad camera and 6K video. Enough resolution that one flight can produce both a photograph fit to print and a frame close enough to read a hairline crack.
DJI Mavic 2 Enterprise Advanced
A 640 by 512 radiometric thermal camera for the jobs where the answer is a temperature difference rather than something visible: trapped moisture, heat leaving a building, a warm shape on cold ground.
Insured with Coverdrone
Full commercial cover, and the certificate goes to anyone who needs to see it before a visit. Managing agents and site managers usually do, and asking is sensible rather than awkward.
A construction background
The person flying has worked in construction, which is why the report says what a defect is and where it sits rather than only that something looks wrong in a photograph.
Fixed price, agreed first
The price is set before the visit and travel inside the coverage area is part of it. No hourly creep, no mileage added afterwards.
Written report within 48 hours
Where the job needs a report, it lands within 48 hours of the flight. Photograph-only jobs have their delivery date agreed at booking instead.
Nearby
Also covered around Totnes
- DartmouthTimber-framed merchant houses on streets that turn into stairs, where one roof drains towards its neighbour and nothing is reachable conventionally.
- Newton AbbotRailway-era terraces on damp low ground plus large trading estates, which splits the work evenly between roofs and commercial flat roofs.
- PaigntonFlat ground behind a long sandy beach, with Edwardian semis, guest houses and a lot of flat-roofed extensions that nobody can see.
- KingsbridgeA steep estuary head town climbing hard from the quay, where slate hanging, dormers and turbulence around chimneys are the recurring subjects.
- IvybridgeA moor edge commuter town built almost entirely between the 1970s and the 1990s, which brings the whole place to the same maintenance age at once.
See which one fits
Tell us what you need in Totnes
Send the address and what is worrying you. Sam Hembury will come back with a fixed price and the next slot that suits the weather.