Drone Surveys

Drone surveys are becoming more and more essential in the roofing industry but beware…

Drone surveys are a safe and easy way to survey almost any roof area. They save on access equipment such as cherry pickers and keep the surveyor from having to set foot on the roof, they are therefore useful for pitched metal roofs, asbestos roofs, slated and tiled roofs, etc. They can also be used for hard to access flat roofs.

Where a drone survey is used on most pitched roofs, the images and footage can usually be used to put together a meaningful report and schedule of works with no need to further inspect these areas. However, it is our opinion that on pitched metal roofs and flat roofs, drones should only be used to highlight areas that require further inspection. This is because the images will only ever show you the surface of the roof, they won’t tell you the condition of the build-up on a flat roof or whether the corrosion you can see on a pitched metal roof is also on the reverse side of the sheet overlap or whether the fixings are correctly installed.

So whilst drones are an excellent surveying tool, we feel that most of the time they should only be used to supplement a wider survey strategy.

At Cookson’s Consultancy, we are passionate about providing our client with the root cause of their roofing issues, we will give an impartial and honest opinion on which surveying technique we feel is best for their roof. We are also qualified to give advice following a drone survey. There are a large number of drone pilots who claim to be able to survey a roof with little or no experience of the roofing industry, please beware of these and put your trust in us and our decades of experience.