Just had a thought.
If you are buying a house, you have a survey. But not on the roof/chimney stack?
That's likely to be the most costly thing to repair.
It occurs to me that if I buy a drone with a video camera, not that much money, I could do a video survey of the roof/chimney stack for not too much. Easy money & I get to play with a drone!
Not done much research, just an idea. Any thoughts?
Two downsides:
True enough, I'd have to learn to fly one.
Haven't looked yet, but I think at just over house height it should be OK? Only 10 metres?
It's the other way around, ie whether you are too close to people. It may be okay on private land, with the owner's permission.
True but can mostly be dealt with by (a) insurance, (b) carrying ladders and fishing rod on the van, and (c) thick skin ;)
Yep -but AIUI the rule against flying near buildings etc are for the hoi polloi. But Dave could seek permission from the CCA for his operations by getting qualified. AIUI not cheap - but I think it'd mean he could put "Drone Pilot" on his van/website/etc
It's a growing business.
The downside I can think of is if you're offering to do the survey, that will incur a liability should the survey prove defective.
OTOH if you were offering an inspection service where you provide pictures but no advice, that might be ok.
That's what professional indemnity insurance is for.
We have experimented with a drone for the inspection of aerials and dishes that are on roofs where access would be expensive, needing machinery or scaffolding. It's all right I suppose, but there are limitations. You can't test the security of things by getting hold and wobbling them, you can't really see small details like cable damage, and there's always the risk that you might have to pay for the access equipment just to get the drone back.
I don't think you'd be able to see whether flashing was intact or whether ridge tiles were insecure.
Bill
You need permission from the CAA to fly a drone for commercial purposes. For this use, unless you limit yourself to surveying isolated country houses, you would also need that to include specific permission to do the following, which are otherwise banned:
Fly over or within 150m of a congested area, which is defined as 'any area of a city, town or settlement which is substantially used for residential, industrial, commercial or recreational purposes'
Fly within 50 metres of any vessel, vehicle or structure that is not under your control.
Take off and land within 30 metres of any person, other than yourself or any person under your control.
A video camera on a long stick would probably be a lot simpler.
Good use for that thrown away golf ball retriever I picked up, it goes out to 6 metres, so with a step ladder and a suitable camera .............
like that is going to find nail sickness...tee hee
If you can't see signs of that from the ground, it probably isn't advanced enough to be a problem.
Very difficult to get decent close ups of a possible problem area. Unless it is a very good drone with a very good camera. And a good pilot.
I'm sure it could done. Is probably illegal but if you check with the immediate neighbours and offer them a free video I doubt you would get any problems provided you can demonstrate you can fly the thing. Brian
Yes and remember the control signal is normally line of sight, but if yyou always keep it in view, as I said I think you would be OK. Its a common sense thing. Brian
Much cheaper and safer to do what I did - a couple of extendable aluminium poles (as used for upstairs windows) joined together, a cheap USB endoscope
Ive also used it to check my gutters.
Andy
Mmm, nice, 2 million *Poxels* :)
Can that be a flying stick? :-)
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