A drone survey firm covering Exmouth

Exmouth sits about half an hour from the base, on the far side of the estuary from Topsham. That is close enough to book on its own but far enough that pairing it with another job in the EX8 or EX3 postcodes is the sensible way to run a day. Managing agents holding several seafront blocks often book them as a set for exactly that reason.

The bigger scheduling factor here is not distance, it is wind. A seafront flight needs a calm enough window for the aircraft to hold position steadily, and on this front that is a real constraint several days a week through the winter. A date here is set against a forecast rather than a diary, and a shifted date is normal rather than a sign of anything going wrong.

Salt-laden south-westerlies come in off the sea here with nothing to break them. Fixings and flashings corrode faster than inland, and wind uplift on ridges and verges is a recurring problem rather than an occasional one. Seafront apartment blocks carry flat roofs and rendered parapets, both of which fail quietly and expensively, and the Regency and Victorian villas on the hillsides behind have slate slopes at heights a ladder has no business reaching.

There is a genuine range of client here as a result: block management companies with a communal roof and a service charge to justify, hotel and holiday-let owners with a short window between seasons to get work done, and homeowners on the inter-war and post-war streets at Withycombe Raleigh and Littleham where the problems are ordinary but the exposure is not.

Flying over a public seafront is a different job from flying over a private garden. In the season there are people on the front all day, and the certificate held sets how close the aircraft may operate to people outside your control. That means a seafront flight is planned around where the public will actually be, with a take off area kept clear, and where the only viable position is over an occupied public space, the flight is timed for early morning rather than pushed through.

The marina and docks quarter adds its own considerations, with moving vessels and a working quayside. None of this makes a survey here difficult, but it is the kind of detail a firm that has not worked the front before tends to discover on the day, and discovering it on the day is how a visit gets wasted.

Two parts of Exmouth sit outside the usual pattern. Sandy Bay carries holiday and park-home accommodation, which means large numbers of similar units under one ownership and a strong argument for recording them together in a single visit rather than reacting to them one at a time.

Orcombe Point and the cliff top above it are the most exposed ground in the town, and properties up there take weather that the sheltered streets behind the front never see. Where a building sits relative to that edge is worth saying when you ask for a price.