With the recent snow, I thought I would talk about aerial drone inspections this week. Why aerial drone inspections? This is one of the ways that Bent Nail is bringing technology to help improve our Knoxville Home Inspections. Technology is great, and anyone who knows me knows that I am a huge tech geek. I also understand that technology doesn’t solve everything. This blog is about the problems that aerial drone inspection does solve and how it makes our home inspections safer for both me and the home.
Making Home Inspections Convenient With Drones
Let’s start with our problem. As everyone knows, the Knoxville area housing market is super-hot. People put shorter and shorter contingency periods in the offer to make it more attractive. I ran into a situation where the buyer had put in three days. Fortunately, we were able to help them out. Also, fortunately, the weather permitted us to walk on the roof during the inspection, but what if it had been raining or if we had a snowstorm? That three-day clock is still running. There isn’t a sane home inspector out there that will get on a wet or snowy roof. It just isn’t safe. I have fallen off one roof, and I don’t plan on falling off another one. So how do you handle a roof inspection when it is wet or snowy? There are two options. The first option is using a ladder and binoculars. This works, but it is tough to change the angle from which you are viewing the roof. It also rules out seeing the top of the three-plus story chimney crown. The second option is to use an aerial drone. You can fly it right to the different roof areas, chimneys, plumbing vents, and flashing you need to see.
Inspecting Roof With Drone
The first question I always get from both customers and real estate agents is, does the camera generate a high enough quality picture? The short answer is yes. The drone creates excellent images and videos to give us the details we need to view the roof-covering and chimneys. The camera on our drone is a 12-megapixel camera and generates 4K video. That is the same megapixel rating and video rating as the iPhone 13. It’s incredible how they have put such excellent cameras in such small devices.
Safe Roof Inspection With An Aerial Drone
So how does the aerial drone help everyone and make things safer? Here is a short explanation for a situation, and it doesn’t have to be wet or snowy. I inspected a house in Knoxville on the side of a hill. The back of the house was three stories high, plus it had a chimney that went up the back of the house. It was a newer house, and we all know how newer larger homes all have high, steep rooflines. The only way I could have gotten to the top of the chimney was to take another ladder on the roof and then climb up the second ladder. This would not be a very safe thing to do. This is where the aerial drone shines as a tool available to us. We were able to pull out the drone and get right over the chimney to see the crown and rain cap.
Avoid The Summer Heat By Using A Drone For Roof Inspections
Another example where the drone helps with our safety and the home’s safety is during sweltering hot weather. I am sure most of you have opened an attic door in the summer. It can be 120+ degrees in the attic. That heat radiates right through the roof sheeting and into the asphalt coating of the shingles. When it is that hot in the summer, it is very easy to damage the roof shingles by walking on them. This damage can even void the warranty of the shingles. This is another example of how the aerial drone can provide a high-quality home inspection while eliminating the chance of damaging the roof by walking on it.
So, remember, when you are looking for an Oak Ridge home inspection or a Knoxville home inspection, or any other place in East Tennessee, you should consider the high-quality home inspection from Bent Nail. I hope these examples have helped you understand why an aerial drone roof inspection is a great tool we can deploy to give you a top-quality home inspection even when the weather doesn’t want to cooperate.
As always, if you have a question, whether you use Bent Nail Home Inspection Services or someone else, you are always welcome to call us. We will be happy to help you in any way we can. One of our goals is to be a resource to realtors and customers throughout Knoxville, Oak Ridge, and East Tennessee.
Have a great day,
Lee and Kadee