No scaffolding to pay for first
Nothing to erect and nothing to dismantle, so the cost of looking is not the cost of a scaffold on a job that may not need one.
Roof Care / Drone Survey
Drone roof surveys and inspections in London
A high-resolution survey of your roof from the air, with no scaffolding, no ladders and nobody walking on the covering. You get the photographs and an honest account of what they show.
Book a drone surveyWhat a drone roof survey is, and who needs one
A drone roof survey is a photographic inspection carried out from the air, close enough to read an individual cracked tile or a split in a lead flashing, and it is for anyone who needs to know the condition of a roof they cannot safely get onto: homeowners with a steep slate pitch, buyers who want to know what they are taking on before exchange, landlords and agents responsible for a roof they have never seen, and businesses whose roof carries plant and cannot be walked without a permit.
People call it a drone roof survey, a drone roof inspection or an aerial roof inspection, and all three mean the same visit. If you want the distinction that actually matters: the survey is the visit, the flight, the photographs and the record of what is up there. The inspection is the judgement made on them, which is where a roofer looking at a lifted slate decides whether it is one slate or the first of forty. We do both, and the second is the part worth paying for.
The practical difference from a traditional inspection is what it costs to look. On a tall or steep roof the access is frequently more expensive than the repair it was erected to investigate. A flight takes that cost off the front of the job, so the decision about spending money on scaffolding is made after somebody has seen the roof rather than before.
A survey is most useful repeated rather than commissioned once in a crisis, because two sets of photographs a year apart show what is moving and what is stable. That is why a flight is one of the items in our planned roof care and maintenance service, alongside gutter clearing, roof cleaning and roofline repairs.
Where the survey turns into work, it is usually one of two things: pitched roof repair and re-roofing on the slate and tile side, or flat roof waterproofing on a parapet roof or an extension.
Benefits
Why survey a roof from the air
Detail you cannot get from a ladder
Close, square-on photographs of every slope, valley, parapet and stack, including the faces that point away from the street.
Nobody on the covering
No weight on brittle tiles, aged slate or a fragile rooflight, and no one working at height to find out whether there is a problem.
A record, not a verbal report
You keep the photographs, dated. That matters for an insurer, a buyer or a leaseholder.
What we offer
What shows from the air that shows nowhere else
A roof hides its failures from the two places people normally look at it from, which are the ground and the loft. These are the ones that only appear from above.
Behind the parapet
On a parapet roof the gutter, the outlet and the whole flat area sit behind a wall built specifically to hide them from the street. Nothing about their condition is visible from the pavement, the garden or the loft, and the first symptom is usually damp at the top of a wall months after the failure started.
The pattern across a slope
Individual faults matter less than their distribution. Three slipped slates in one place is a repair; the same three scattered across an elevation means the nails are failing everywhere and the roof is finished. That is a judgement about a whole slope at once, and only a photograph from above shows a whole slope at once.
See pitched roof repair and re-roofingThe faces that point away
A chimney stack has four faces and you can see one of them from the street. The flaunching on top, the pointing on the far side and the lead soakers where the stack meets the tiles are where stacks actually fail, and all three are out of sight from every position at ground level.
Valleys and hidden gutters
A valley between two pitches collects everything that lands on both. Under trees it fills, holds water against the lining all winter and gives no external sign until the lining goes. Looking straight down into the run is the only way to see how much is in there.
See guttering and rainwater goodsStanding water on a flat roof
Ponding shows as a stain, an outline of dried silt or a change in texture, and it reads clearly from directly overhead and barely at all from an oblique angle. Where it sits tells you whether the falls were wrong from the start or the deck has since deflected.
See flat roof repair and waterproofingWhen you would want one
When people commission a drone roof survey
Six situations account for almost every one of the drone roof inspections we fly. What changes between them is not the flight, it is what the report has to answer.
After a storm
Wind damage is scattered and frequently nowhere near the part of the roof that started leaking. A flight covers every elevation, including the ones facing away from the weather, and dates the damage with photographs while the cause is still obvious.
Before you buy
A homebuyer survey looks at the roof from the ground with binoculars and says so in the report. A flight gets you the condition of the covering, the stacks and the flashings before exchange, which is while you can still do something about the price.
A dispute with a neighbour or a freeholder
Most roof disputes are arguments about something none of the parties has seen. Photographs of which side of a party boundary a valley has failed on, or which of three properties a shared gutter is blocked at, move it off opinion.
An insurance claim
Insurers ask for dated photographs of the damage and an account of what caused it. A survey flown after the event produces exactly that, and it also establishes the condition of the rest of the roof, which is usually the next question.
Planned maintenance
One survey tells you the state of a roof. Two, a year apart, tell you what is moving, and that is the difference between planning work and reacting to it. This is the version that belongs in a maintenance schedule rather than a crisis.
See planned roof care and maintenanceCommercial and managed buildings
Where getting a person onto the roof needs a permit, a booked contractor and sometimes a lift, the administration costs more than the inspection. A flight produces the same record without any of it, and covers a large area in one visit.
See commercial flat roofingScope
What the survey covers
- Cracked, slipped, delaminating or missing tiles and slates
- Ridge, hip and verge lines, and the mortar bedding them
- Chimney stacks: flaunching, pointing, pots and the lead around them
- Flashings, soakers and abutments where the roof meets a wall
- Valleys, hidden gutters and the outlets they drain through
- Parapets, coping stones and cover flashings
- Flat roof surfaces, upstands, laps and standing water
- Rooflights, roof windows and perished seals
- Moss, lichen and organic build-up, and where it is holding water
- Plant, aerials, cable runs and anything else fixed through the covering
What you get
What you get at the end, and what to do with it
The report is the product, not the flight. It arrives as a PDF with the images in it, and it is written to be forwarded rather than to be read once by you and filed.
- The photographs themselves, at full resolution, so somebody else can look at the same evidence rather than take our word for it
- A note against each finding saying what the image shows, in plain terms rather than trade shorthand
- The findings separated into what needs attention now and what is worth looking at again next time
- Where a fault has more than one possible cause, what the alternatives are and what would settle it
- The date the survey was flown, which is what makes it evidence rather than an opinion
- A quote for any work that follows, referencing the same images, so the price is tied to the thing in the photograph
Materials
When a drone is not enough and somebody has to go up
A survey from the air is the right first move on most roofs and the wrong only move on some. These are the cases where the flight narrows the question down and then a person still has to get onto the roof to answer it.
Anything that has to be touched
Physical testA camera cannot tell you whether a slate is sound or whether the nail behind it has gone, whether mortar is holding or crumbles when pressed, or whether a lap has lifted or is simply dirty. Where that changes the recommendation, somebody goes up and checks by hand.
Tracing a leak to its source
DiagnosisWater travels along battens and rafters before it appears, so the wet patch on a ceiling is frequently nowhere near the hole. The flight rules out or confirms the obvious external candidates; the rest of the diagnosis is done in the loft, with a hose test if it comes to it.
See how we diagnose a roof leakAnything under the covering
StructureRotten battens, sagging rafters, failed felt and saturated insulation are all invisible from above, because the covering is in the way. A drone reads the surface. Anything below it is a loft inspection or an opening up.
A roof with no safe launch or line of sight
Site limitsDense tree cover over a roof, a light well between tall buildings, or a site with no clear ground position can leave a flight without the sightlines it needs. We say so at the time rather than delivering a partial survey and calling it complete.
How it works
How a drone roof survey works
1
Tell us what you need to know
A pre-purchase check, a storm, a leak you cannot place or a routine condition record are four different surveys. Knowing which one it is changes what we fly and what the report concentrates on.
2
We agree a time and what it costs
Where the survey is part of assessing work we would then quote for, there is no charge. A standalone condition report is priced separately and agreed with you before we come out.
3
The flight
The drone takes off from the ground or the garden. Most houses are covered in around fifteen minutes: every elevation, every junction, and close passes on anything that looks wrong. Nobody goes on the roof and nothing is touched.
4
We look at what came back
The photographs are reviewed away from the site, because a judgement about a whole slope is made by comparing frames rather than by glancing at a screen in the sun.
5
You get the report and the images
Photographs of what was found, what each one shows, and what we would do about it, separated into what needs doing now and what is worth watching. Yours to keep and to forward.
Why choose us
Why customers choose K & M Roofing
01
HYDRONYLON Approved Contractor, a certification most London roofers do not hold.
02
One team for the whole job, from survey to sign-off.
03
Rated 5.0 on Google from 60+ reviews.
04
Free, no-obligation site surveys with honest advice.
05
Transparent pricing with no hidden costs, and a 10-year workmanship guarantee.
What our 10-year workmanship guarantee covers, how it differs from a manufacturer product guarantee, and what falls outside it.
Where we work
Drone roof surveys across South and West London
What a survey is looking for changes with the building stock, so each area page sets out what the flight actually finds on the roofs there.
- Roofing in Clapham: Mansion block parapets and their coping stones, moving seasonally on London clay, and the cast iron gutters behind them.
- Roofing in Balham: The hidden gutter behind a terrace parapet, the one part of a Balham roof invisible from anywhere at ground level.
- Roofing in Wandsworth: Shared valleys crossing a party boundary, where the photographs settle which side the failure is on.
- Roofing in Battersea: Steep slate pitches where the scaffold can cost more than the repair, so the survey decides whether it is worth erecting.
- Roofing in Wimbledon: Tall multi-pot chimney stacks where all four faces need looking at and only one is visible from the road.
- Roofing in Croydon: Nail sickness on Victorian slate, a pattern across a whole elevation rather than a fault in one place.
- Roofing in Southwark: Commercial roofs carrying plant and shaft heads, where the permit takes longer to arrange than the survey does.
- Roofing in Vauxhall: Podium decks part way up a tower and profiled metal failing at the laps, neither reachable on foot without booked access.
- Roofing in Acton: Valley gutters filling under mature tree cover, and slate delamination that reads as a change in texture.
Knowledge
Read more before you decide
Common questions
Frequently asked questions
In practice they are the same job and most people use whichever word comes to mind. If you want the distinction: the survey is the visit and the photographs, the inspection is the judgement made on them. A survey that hands you a folder of images and no opinion has done half the work, because the value is in a roofer telling you whether the thing in frame is a slate to replace or the first sign that the whole elevation is going.
Standalone drone roof surveys run roughly £150 to £350 for most UK houses as an indicative market rate for 2026, with the range driven by roof size, how many elevations need covering and how detailed a written report you want. K & M Roofing Solutions does not charge for a drone survey where it is part of assessing work we would then quote for, which covers most of the surveys we fly. A paid standalone condition report, for a purchase or a dispute where no works follow, is priced separately. Either way we agree it with you before we come out, and any binding price for works follows the survey.
The photographs and a written account of what they show. Each finding is tied to the image it came from, so you can see the thing being described rather than take it on trust, and the findings are separated into what needs attention now and what is worth watching. Where work follows, the quote references the same images. The file is yours to keep and to forward to a surveyor, an insurer, a freeholder or a buyer.
It is the kind of evidence an insurer asks for and we write it with that in mind after a storm. What we cannot tell you is whether a particular policy will pay, because that depends on wording we have not seen and on a decision that is the insurer's to make. We are not loss adjusters and do not present the report as an insurance assessment. What it does is put the condition of the roof beyond argument on the date it was flown.
It is frequently the most useful thing in the file, for the reason above: these disputes are about a roof none of the parties has seen. What it is not is an expert witness report prepared for proceedings, so if a matter is heading for court your solicitor may want one of those instead. Nothing stops the survey being the starting point for it.
Somebody needs to give permission and let us onto the ground or into the garden for a launch position, but you do not need to be there for the flight itself, and there is no access to the inside of the property required at all. Nobody walks on the roof and nothing is moved. On a block or a commercial site we normally deal with the agent rather than the occupiers, which is usually the point of using a drone there.
Wind and rain do, the season mostly does not. We do not fly in heavy rain or strong gusts, because the first ruins the imagery and the second costs the stability the imagery depends on, so a survey occasionally moves by a day or two in unsettled weather. Otherwise winter surveys are perfectly workable and in some ways better: bare trees give clearer sightlines to the roof, and low sun picks out lifted tiles and standing water that a flat summer light hides. We check conditions on the morning and tell you straight away if it needs moving.
Most residential roofs are covered in around fifteen minutes on site. Larger commercial and industrial roofs take longer, because there is more area to fly and more plant to photograph, but it is still a fraction of the time erecting access would take. That fifteen minutes is the flight itself; reviewing the images and writing them up happens afterwards.
It finds the candidates, and on a pitched roof it frequently finds the answer outright, because a slipped slate or a split flashing above the wet patch is usually the whole story. What it cannot do is follow water once it is inside the structure, and water travels along battens and rafters before it drops, so the stain on the ceiling is often nowhere near the hole. Where the flight does not settle it, the next step is a loft inspection and, if needed, a hose test working up the roof in sections.
Yes, and it is where the case for flying is strongest, for the access reasons set out above. The one thing worth adding is what a survey turns up on a roof nobody has been onto for years: plant, aerials and cable runs fixed through a covering that was never detailed to carry them, which the building frequently has no record of.
Those are the roofs a drone is most obviously right for. An asbestos cement sheet roof, an old corrugated roof, a fragile rooflight or anything else that will not reliably take a person's weight can be surveyed with nothing touching it at all, which removes both the fall risk and any question of disturbing the material. To be clear about the limit of that: a survey tells you what condition the material is in, and nothing more. Removing or working on asbestos is licensed work and we do not hold that licence, so anything beyond the photographs is a job for a licensed contractor.
Free on-site estimate
Let us talk about your roof
Tell us what is going on and we will arrange a free survey. No pressure, no hard sell, just honest advice and a clear price.
Mateusz07544 188268