Drones & Roofing

I've been using my quadcopter drone in some of my roof inspections. Of course I still have to put boots on the roof, but this gives a unique perspective that you can't get any other way. The camera is 14 megapixel and the video is such high resolution that I was able to spot hail damage on a chimney vent cap on my son's house.

Here is a compilation of a few: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0nbxTFtaG10

Gonna go shoot aerial video of the John Deere cotton stripper stripping cotton across the road from me in awhile.

Oh absolutely. Could do a 140 story building if you want.

is the range enough to do a steeple inspection?

Depending on your proximity to a controlled airfield, it could be 400 agl (above ground level) or 1,400' You will find that 200-300' is as high as you need to be to get good video.

Your iPhone app will tell you exactly how high you are. Also, controlled airfield are programmed into the GPS and your drone will warn you if you get close to where you shouldn't be, and it will land itself if you enter that restricted area.

The FAA is taking a hands off approach to drones, but that will change in the future. As per any government entity, they exist to grow and to tax and they will for sure want to enforce/control drones in the future.

I JUST ORDER A DRONE THAT I WANT TO SHOOT ONE OF MY PROJECTS FOR MY WEB SITE. WHERE DO I STAND WITH FAA

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I', waiting for the Commando 450 drone, I hear it's going to have cupholders.

I use Eagle View satellite on a lot of stuff, but the drone can catch way more detail. I can go look/video under the eaves if I need to. I can get up close to an HVAC unit and see flashing slide down under the counterflashing. My son had me check his chimney for birds nests. I can do all of this from the ground if I want and don't need to see where the drone is as I can see a real time video on my iPhone, and it also has radar on the iPhone app to tell me exactly where it is, what altitude, and which way it is pointing.

That is a legal gray area though, because technically the FAA wants it to be in your sight all the time. Since I am a pilot I'm supposed to know the FARs and likely wouldn't get away with saying I didn't know the regs. Also, technically you are supposed to have a commercial pilot rating in order to make money off of anything flying, but that too is a gray area...it will be less gray in coming months as the FAA wants to control drones. Still, you can offer it as a free service.

My Phantom Vision 2+ drone is extremely stable - it locks on to 7-10 satellites and stays right where it was when you take fingers off the controls. Lift it off to 3' or 1,000', let go of the controls and, regardless of wind conditions, the satellite keeps it within 2.5 meters of where it is. If you lose radio contact or panic, or the batteries get low, it automatically flies back to where it took off and lands itself.

Very high tech.

I looked at doing this on commercial buildings in Florida for my sons company, then he told me the cost for the aerial surveys that he uses now, and it doesn't justify the initial expense of starting up a new company lol, I starte doing video and moisture surveys back in the early 80's and it was a sucess for us. he cost was dirt cheap we used a Tramex decscanner thhe cost at the time was round 4500, I also employed a engineer that was very familiar with roofing and carried all of necessary licenses. We were working for a large national firm that had over 400 shopping centers coast to coast, The PE would go to every location make a drawing and mark it up then transmit the findings back to the home office, with the use of a HP plotter we would have the item delivered to the customers office the next day, then the PE would ship a video tape via FedEx and we would have a complete file on each unit that he inspected We were the only ones that wer doing this here in our area and the customer thought it was wonderful, how ever it did not last for ever lol

Used drone to verify that roofers forgot to install a chimney cap on 1 of his chimneys 4 stories up. Actually can email the photo to him or put it on Facebook while the drone is still in the air as it uses my iPhone for navigation. That's me in the red shirt in the driveway...