Drone survey & thing on roof?

kayen

Hello there,

What are peoples thoughts on the value of a drone survey (£200) in addition to a level 3 building survey?  It's a mid terrace property.

Keen to hear thoughts and experiences whether the drone surveys are useful and worth the extra spend?   

Also, there's a a few raised parts on the roof I noticed, is this for roof ventilation ?

user1977

A surcharge for using a drone (which the surveyor presumably already has) feels a bit like a "going up a ladder" surcharge...are there any parts of the roof which wouldn't be easily visible otherwise?

kayen

user1977 said:

A surcharge for using a drone (which the surveyor presumably already has) feels a bit like a "going up a ladder" surcharge...are there any parts of the roof which wouldn't be easily visible otherwise?

I mean you can see a part of the roof from across the road and parts of the roof standing in the rear garden, I'm guessing the surveyor uses binoculars to assess?  I  imagine there will be other parts not visible but I'm not sure which ones

stuart45

The raised bits are vent tiles. Drones are useful for large, complex roofs where there are areas that can't be seen from below. You can probably see a lot of that roof apart from the chimney flaunching.

ProDave

To my untrained eye, the top few courses of brick on that chimney look very dodgy.

Live overhead cables look very close, that might make access to repair difficult or expensive (may need power cut off by DNO)

tizerbelle

ProDave said:

Live overhead cables look very close, that might make access to repair difficult or expensive (may need power cut off by DNO)

That many cables in a residential location? More likely to be Openreach overhead cables than power, I'd have thought.  And quite likely the angle of the photo makes them look closer than they really are.

eddddy

user1977 said:

A surcharge for using a drone (which the surveyor presumably already has) feels a bit like a "going up a ladder" surcharge...

Going off topic, but that reminds me on of a conversation I had with a drainage company person sent out by an insurance company to investigate repeated drain blockages.

He said "I've put a camera down the drain, and there are tree roots blocking the drain.
So first I have to phone the insurers to see if they'll pay the extra fee for me to put the camera down the drain.
If they pay the fee, then I'll phone them back a bit later and tell them about the tree roots."

He didn't say what his plan would be if the insurers refused to pay the extra fee.

BlueVeranda

I would say that flying a drone over can provide useful information - we found the source of a leak that wasn't visible from the street by doing so - but it was our drone after purchasing the house and the reason we sent it up was that the leak was also visible on the inside of the loft space.

I'm not sure we'd have bothered if it was going to cost us £200.

Grizebeck

ProDave said:

To my untrained eye, the top few courses of brick on that chimney look very dodgy.

Live overhead cables look very close, that might make access to repair difficult or expensive (may need power cut off by DNO)

No it shouldn't be expensive 
Our DNO sheathed the cables where our contractors were working free of charge. In that bright yellow trunking 

Albermarle

BlueVeranda said:

I would say that flying a drone over can provide useful information - we found the source of a leak that wasn't visible from the street by doing so - but it was our drone after purchasing the house and the reason we sent it up was that the leak was also visible on the inside of the loft space.

I'm not sure we'd have bothered if it was going to cost us £200.

Or if there was no evidence of any leak.

kayen

thank you for weighing in everyone. I'm not getting an overwhelming impression that doing a drone survey at this stage is essential, or going to yield significant results, to justify the cost,  unless there's a 'reason' to do it.   
 

Maybe its best to get it done later, if there are issues flagged by the survey from binoculars assessment and looking inside  the loft space.  Apparently insulation  was laid down a 2-3 years ago, so hopefully this wont impede the surveyors internal assessment.   Food for thought!