What is drone roof inspection?
A drone roof inspection is simply a visual roof inspection but uses drones rather than traditional roof inspection methods like basic eye inspection. The old and most basic method of a roof inspection is getting on a ladder or cherry picker and inspecting the roof using the naked eye for flaws or areas of interest or they may snap a photo with their phone or small camera. But with the use of drones for roof inspections you don’t need to leave the ground to do a roof inspection and by doing a drone roof inspection the quality, efficiency, risk, and cost of the roof inspection are reduced and optimized.
Can I use a drone to inspect my roof?
If you decide to inspect your roof using a drone by yourself, that’s not very advisable. Because it has to be done professionally and it’s a regulated thing. Also, there are procedures has to be done beforehand to take off the drone for a roof inspection (we would talk about them below).
If you want to do a drone roof inspection, Of cause you can get it done by contacting drone roof inspecting services near you. Simply, just by googling “drone roof inspection services near me”, there would be dozens of service results and you can contact them.
How much does a drone roof inspection cost
Most of the time, Drone roof inspection service price depends on different factors such as the size of the roof, climate, roofing material, climate, and accessibility. Usually, drone roof inspection service price ranges from $150 – $400 and costs more than the traditional method (75$ – 200$) but it’s worth the service.
How much infrared thermal roof inspection cost
If you are interested in infrared drone roof inspection, the price would rise further such as $400 – $650 per operation, but those are usually used in special use cases of roof inspections such as detecting trapped moisture on a roof’s surface, water damage underneath the roof, heat-loss and issues with insulation.
How drone roof inspections are done?
Drone roof inspections have to be done by certified professional drone inspectors because there is a risk of getting damage to properties and violating FAA rules and procedures by someone who doesn’t have knowledge or training about that. In this section let’s see how usually drone inspections are done.
1. Before taking off the Drone for the roof inspection.
- Inform the community. Set up your landing zone to make sure that the community knows that you’re about to perform a drone operation.
- Notify police and local law enforcement that you are about to do a flight operation.
- Verify the Airspace. Using the Airmap app, drone pilots can schedule flights and get clearance for operations in a specified radius. Getting clearance for drone operations is so essential unless you are violating FAA rules and it’s very serious business.
- Make sure the drone is properly set up prior to the flight. Securely set up propellers, make sure your arms are in place, and make sure the camera is stable and the landing gear is secure.
- Obviously, Make sure you have the property owner’s consent.
2. After taking off the Drone.
- Check drone positioning and whether functioning properly. Before taking the drone high in the air, check the drone’s functions (forward, backward, sideways, and 360) with some feet (4ft – 6ft) elevation, therefore it’s only gonna fall a few feet and not going to damage the property.
- Check the wind resistance and connection strength of the drone.
- Make sure there is no doubt with drone controlling skills.
3. While Inspecting Roof.
- Start from a certain corner and work your way around. Usually, drone inspectors recommend starting at a certain corner of the house coverage and working your way around the house. It doesn’t matter if it’s a clockwise or a counterclockwise movement as long as you get full coverage of the property.
- Capture or film in specific areas. Intermittently, inspectors capture/ film roofs for specific areas closer to post-investigation in the office.
- Keep eye contact with the drone. Federal law requires that you always have to have your eyes on the drone. Also, standing facing the rear of the drone is a good habit to ease orientation.
- Keep the drone power level down (If available). Therefore you have less risk of accidentally smashing into the property and ease to position the drone.
- When the battery level is down to about 30%, bring the drone down. Usually, the drone flight time is around 15-20 minutes. So if your roof inspection takes much longer time than that, you definitely have to pause the operation mid and bring down the drone to swap batteries at about 30% level.
- Consider the risk of drone overheating. If you are flying the drone on a very sunny summer day, consider the drone’s temperature and cooling down (Especially, if it has a black body)
4. Conclude Roof Inspection Operation.
- Notify police and local law enforcement. Once the inspection operation is done successfully, inform notified police and local law enforcement that, you have finished the operation successfully.
- Creating the report for the client. After further post-investigation and evaluation at the office, the inspector creates a report including all the details upon inspection and evaluations for the client. Therefore the client has all the information for taking required and suitable smart decisions.
Drone roof inspection benefits
1. Safety.
Most of the accidents while inspecting roofs are caused by ladders but with the switch of drone roof inspection, there is no need for using ladders and zero life risk.
2. The client can get smart decisions with the received information.
Because in drone roof inspections, clients get a well-formed informative report with images from the inspector, clients can use that information for future smart decisions.
3. Less risk of damaging the roof.
When inspecting roofs in the traditional way, sometimes inspectors have to step on roofs and that could damage the roof in long term.
4. Less physical workload and equipment.
Manual roof inspections require more equipment such as ropes, tape, ladders, and planning. Also, the inspector has to put in some physical work to get the job done. Besides that, the client has to care about the inspector’s safety, so at least the client has to keep an eye on him.
But with the use of drone roof inspections, you can bypass all these issues. There is no physical workload and the inspector doesn’t need to do any risky actions while inspecting the roof.
5. Accessibility.
As the drone can position aerially anywhere, the inspector can gather information from anywhere usually challenging.
6. Optimized field time.
Same as mentioned before, as the time-wasting physical workload is reduced, the inspector can perform the roof inspection quickly and efficiently. So the inspector doesn’t need to do the inspection for hours. Also, roof inspectors can offer their service to many clients per day and earn more money.