Drone survey for Grade II listed building: Greystones House

Drone surveys for listed buildings save even more time and money than aerial inspections of ‘standard’ structures. For ‘everyday’ properties, the cumbersome scaffold builds and fragmented photographic coverage of traditional surveys already feel burdensome compared to drone inspections. Apply that comparison to listed buildings and the aerial solution is an even clearer winner.

Take our recent drone survey for Greystones House in Dorset; the building is large, irregularly-shaped, and likely quite fragile in a few places. Erecting scaffolding around architecture from a time when everything was a little less square can take just as much effort as constructing the framework of the building itself!

Drones are far less likely to damage listed buildings, and they certainly won’t leave unsightly metal frameworks around properties celebrated for their beauty for months on end.

The owners of Greystones House — a Grade II listed building — first approached us in late September 2020. The same afternoon, we’d plotted our preliminary flight plans, prepped our (always thorough!) risk assessments, and appointed a date for the drone survey.

Every flight was completed without a hitch. Legally, safely, and efficiently.

In just a matter of days, Safeguard Claims — our property surveying arm — had written up a 42-page conditions report. These reports highlight every visible instance of damage, debris, and dilapidation, from general roof wear to historic issues prolonged by improper/ineffective repairs.

Another advantage of drone surveys over traditional surveys: capturing the bigger picture. Our reports always feature both the cropped-in close-ups and the zoomed-out context shots, so it’s clearer to clients where every earmarked repair is sited on the wider blueprint of each property.

Our clients at Greystones House were thrilled with the report! Before long, they came back to us to say that it helped them commit spending to all necessary repairs — to be carried out in such a way as to preserve the original state of the protected building, of course!