# Drone Surveyors

> The drone surveyor who flies the job: CAA registered, A2 Certificate of Competency, Coverdrone insured, Mavic 4 Pro and thermal, covering Devon from Exeter.

Someone who has already found two or three drone firms and now wants to know which person will actually turn up, what they are qualified and insured to do, what aircraft they own, and what they have flown before.

Sam Hembury flies every job on this site himself, out of Exeter. Registered with the CAA, holding an A2 Certificate of Competency, insured with Coverdrone. What he holds, what he flies and where he covers is all set out below, so you can check it before you pick up the phone.

## Services

- [Roof and building inspection](https://drone-surveyors.uk/services/roof-and-building-inspection): The main job: every slope, elevation, stack and gutter photographed close enough to make a decision on, without anything touching the building.
- [Thermal inspection](https://drone-surveyors.uk/services/thermal-inspection): The radiometric camera on the Mavic 2 Enterprise Advanced, used where the question is heat, damp or trapped moisture rather than what a covering looks like.
- [Mapping, records and search](https://drone-surveyors.uk/services/mapping-records-and-search): Everything flown over an area rather than a building: mapping runs, dated site records, aerial photography, and searching open ground when something is missing.

## Key pages

- [Home](https://drone-surveyors.uk/): One named surveyor, and everything you would want to check
- [Services](https://drone-surveyors.uk/services): What Drone Surveyors does and what each job includes.
- [How it works](https://drone-surveyors.uk/how-it-works): How a job runs, from the first call to what arrives afterwards.
- [Areas covered](https://drone-surveyors.uk/areas): 25 towns across Devon and the South West.
- [About](https://drone-surveyors.uk/about): Who runs Drone Surveyors and how it works.
- [Contact](https://drone-surveyors.uk/contact): How to get in touch and what happens next.

## Other pages

- [What the permissions mean](https://drone-surveyors.uk/what-the-permissions-mean)

## Areas covered

- [Exeter, Devon](https://drone-surveyors.uk/areas/exeter): The base town, ten minutes away. The constraint in Exeter is other people rather than distance: dense roofscapes, student blocks, city airspace.
- [Plymouth, Devon](https://drone-surveyors.uk/areas/plymouth): About an hour down the A38 and the biggest urban job on the list: limestone ridges, post-war flat roofs, and salt wind coming straight off the Sound.
- [Newton Abbot, Devon](https://drone-surveyors.uk/areas/newton-abbot): About half an hour from Exeter. A flat floodplain town of railway-era terraces and trading estate roofs, where mist off the Teign keeps shaded slate green.
- [Barnstaple, Devon](https://drone-surveyors.uk/areas/barnstaple): A little over an hour on the A361. North Devon's main town, low beside the Taw, taking Atlantic weather up the estuary with nothing to break it.
- [Topsham, Devon](https://drone-surveyors.uk/areas/topsham): Ten minutes from Exeter. A dense listed core on the Exe estuary, where salt air and hard driven rain do the damage rather than neglect.
- [Exmouth, Devon](https://drone-surveyors.uk/areas/exmouth): Twenty minutes from Exeter and the most exposed town on the list: two miles of open front, unbroken salt wind, and uplift at ridge and verge.
- [Teignmouth, Devon](https://drone-surveyors.uk/areas/teignmouth): About half an hour from Exeter. A seafront town that catches easterly gales, which finds the details built only for south westerly weather.
- [Dawlish, Devon](https://drone-surveyors.uk/areas/dawlish): Half an hour from Exeter, among the most storm exposed places on this coast, where cliff top bungalows take unbroken wind at ridge and verge.
- [Budleigh Salterton, Devon](https://drone-surveyors.uk/areas/budleigh-salterton): Around twenty five minutes from Exeter. Substantial detached houses in generous plots, long held and lightly altered, with thatch on the outskirts.
- [Sidmouth, Devon](https://drone-surveyors.uk/areas/sidmouth): About forty minutes from Exeter. A Regency town in a steep valley, where hills either side funnel wind and make the air round chimneys turbulent.
- [Torquay, Devon](https://drone-surveyors.uk/areas/torquay): About forty minutes from Exeter. Seven limestone hills, and Italianate villas whose elaborate roofscapes cannot be seen from the street at all.
- [Dartmouth, Devon](https://drone-surveyors.uk/areas/dartmouth): Just over an hour from Exeter. Streets steep enough to become stairs, jettied merchant houses, and roofs that discharge onto their neighbours.
- [Bideford, Devon](https://drone-surveyors.uk/areas/bideford): About an hour and a quarter from Exeter. A steep former port on the Torridge, where scaffold access is hard and slate hanging exists for a reason.
- [Okehampton, Devon](https://drone-surveyors.uk/areas/okehampton): About forty minutes from Exeter, and one of the wettest towns covered. Dartmoor lifts Atlantic air on the doorstep, so roofs here stay wet.
- [Tavistock, Devon](https://drone-surveyors.uk/areas/tavistock): About an hour from Exeter. A Victorian planned town in green Hurdwick stone, very wet, with tall stone stacks that take real wind loading.
- [Ivybridge, Devon](https://drone-surveyors.uk/areas/ivybridge): About fifty minutes from Exeter. A late twentieth century town on the southern moor edge, where mechanically fixed ridge and verge details matter.
- [South Molton, Devon](https://drone-surveyors.uk/areas/south-molton): About fifty minutes from Exeter. A livestock market town below Exmoor, where farm buildings on open ground take sustained wind loading.
- [Crediton, Devon](https://drone-surveyors.uk/areas/crediton): Fifteen minutes from Exeter. Cob and thatch in the lanes, Devon slate and stone tile in the town, and a valley that is hard on thatch ridges.
- [Cullompton, Devon](https://drone-surveyors.uk/areas/cullompton): Twenty five minutes up the M5. A Culm valley town of medieval fabric, thatch and modern estates, on ground that holds damp and frost.
- [Tiverton, Devon](https://drone-surveyors.uk/areas/tiverton): Half an hour from Exeter, up a wet stretch of the Exe valley, where steep sites put many roofs above the local roofline and into more wind.
- [Honiton, Devon](https://drone-surveyors.uk/areas/honiton): Thirty five minutes from Exeter. A uniform Georgian high street rebuilt after fires, in a valley whose sitting fog keeps roofs damp all winter.
- [Ottery St Mary, Devon](https://drone-surveyors.uk/areas/ottery-st-mary): About half an hour from Exeter. An inland valley town where mist and damp let moss establish fast on shaded slopes, with cob and thatch in the lanes.
- [Axminster, Devon](https://drone-surveyors.uk/areas/axminster): About fifty minutes from Exeter. A hilltop town near the Dorset border, open to wind from every quarter, with large span former industrial roofs.
- [Totnes, Devon](https://drone-surveyors.uk/areas/totnes): About forty five minutes from Exeter. A steep medieval hill town on the Dart, packed with hidden valleys and party wall abutments.
- [Taunton, Somerset](https://drone-surveyors.uk/areas/taunton): About an hour up the M5. A Somerset county town on the flat vale floor: drier than Devon, but it holds fog and frost, and buildings age differently.

## What is on the record

- Registered with the CAA: A registered operator with both an Operator ID and a Flyer ID. The Operator ID is the one that has to be displayed on the aircraft, and it is the number a client or an insurer asks for.
- A2 Certificate of Competency: The A2 CofC is the theory and self-practical qualification that sits above the basic Flyer ID test. There is no GVC, which is stated here rather than left out, because it changes how some sites have to be planned.
- Insured with Coverdrone: Commercial cover through Coverdrone, one of the specialist drone insurers. A copy of the certificate goes out on request before a booking, not after it.
- DJI Mavic 4 Pro: The main survey aircraft. A 100 megapixel Hasselblad camera and 6K video, which is what lets a photograph of a ridge from twenty metres away still show an open mortar joint.
- DJI Mavic 2 Enterprise Advanced: The thermal aircraft. A 640 by 512 radiometric thermal camera alongside the visual one, so a heat pattern can be read against the picture of the same elevation.
- Construction background: The surveying came after years of contracting, so the report is written by somebody who has stood on the scaffold as well as flown over it, and who knows which faults matter and which are cosmetic.
- Written report within 48 hours: A process commitment, not a sales promise. The flight is the short part of the job; the report is where the time goes, and it lands within two days of the visit.
- No scaffolding, no ladders: Nothing leans on the building and nobody goes up it. That removes the access cost, the permit paperwork and the working-at-height risk from the survey itself.

## Contact

- Phone: 07426 908037
- Email: info@exeterdronesurveys.co.uk
- Enquiry form: https://drone-surveyors.uk/contact
- Based in Exeter, covering Devon and the South West

## Optional

- [Full text version](https://drone-surveyors.uk/llms-full.txt): every service, town and question on this site as markdown.
- [Sitemap](https://drone-surveyors.uk/sitemap.xml)
- [Privacy](https://drone-surveyors.uk/privacy)
- [Terms](https://drone-surveyors.uk/terms)