Roof leak detection in Tiverton

Tiverton's medieval and Georgian centre sits low where the Lowman joins the Exe, with Victorian mill workers' terraces and extensive post-war estates climbing sharply north and west up the valley side, and large modern development on the town's eastern edge. Natural slate and clay plain tile cover most of the older stock, with stone slate on some outlying buildings and concrete tile on the estates.

The steep streets change something a flatter town does not have to think about: a roof on the upper part of a climbing terrace sits well above the general roofline of the town, exposed to wind in a way its equivalent lower down the same street is not.

Cullompton, Crediton, Exeter and Wellington are all near enough to combine into one visit, and each has a separate page here, because the steep valley sites that define so much of Tiverton do not apply the same way on flatter ground a few miles in any direction.

The Exe valley here is notably wet, well above the Devon average, and combined with the steep siting it means a real number of Tiverton's roofs face higher wind loading than their pitch and covering were designed around, which shows up first at ridges and verges that were never detailed for the exposure the site actually gets.

On the mill terraces the classic Victorian fault, a silted lead valley between the main roof and a rear addition, is common, and the steep site means that valley is often more visible from a neighbour's upper window than from the ground, which is part of why so many of these leaks go unnoticed for a long time.

The EX16 postcode area covers a notably large stretch of Mid Devon beyond the town itself, and the steep siting that defines the centre eases off noticeably on the newer development towards the eastern edge, which changes the wind loading a roof there actually faces.

A roof sitting several metres above street level on a steep terrace is exactly the situation where a tower or scaffold becomes disproportionately expensive relative to the size of the roof, while a drone's standoff distance is unaffected by how far the eaves are off the pavement.

Knightshayes Court and the Grand Western Canal sit on the town's edge as reminders that this has always been a place built on a slope, and a trace flown here is planned with that slope, not just the address, in mind.

Blundell's School and the other larger institutional buildings around the town carry roofs on a different scale again to the mill terraces below them, more roof area, more valleys, more junctions between older and newer sections added over the years. A trace on a building like that still comes back as one written report within 48 hours, sorted by elevation so a facilities team can see which part of a large roof needs attention first.