Drone chimney survey in Brixham

Brixham is built in a steep bowl around its working harbour, with tightly packed fishermen's cottages on the harbour slopes, many rendered and painted, and Victorian terraces climbing above them. Post-war housing sits on the upper ground and modern development spreads towards Churston, but it is the packed harbourside cottage stock, with its close-set, often shared stacks on very steep, narrow streets, that defines the access problem this site's survey exists to solve here.

Sitting on the southern headland of Tor Bay with Berry Head's limestone cliffs immediately east, Brixham is the most exposed part of the whole bay. Easterly gales come straight into the harbour, and the headland position means the town takes wind from every quarter rather than the single prevailing direction a more sheltered site would see, so ridge, hip and verge fixings, and the equivalent joints on a stack, are worked harder here than almost anywhere else this site covers.

Getting scaffolding, or even a ladder safely footed, onto Brixham's steepest harbourside streets is a genuine problem before any repair has even been scoped, and a stack shared between two packed cottages adds a second complication on top of it. A drone survey covers the whole stack from a standoff distance those streets cannot offer a ladder, whatever the gradient underneath.

Berry Head National Nature Reserve, immediately east of the harbour, is the limestone headland responsible for much of the town's exposure, and the working fish market at the harbour itself means Brixham's economy, unlike some of its resort neighbours, still runs substantially on the working port rather than tourism alone. Churston Cove, towards the edge of town, sits in a rather more sheltered position than the harbour bowl proper.

Paignton and Torquay are both close to Brixham and both covered on their own pages, useful if a booking on the exposed harbour slopes here can be paired with a job further round the bay.

Flat roofs on the harbourside extensions sit right alongside the tightly packed cottage stacks this page has focused on, and where the two meet, an extension roof butting up against an older cottage stack, the junction is exactly the kind of detail that benefits from being checked close rather than assumed sound because the rest of the roof looks fine.

A packed harbourside cottage often carries a single small pot set low against the roofline, a shape suited to the tight, steep plots those cottages were built on, in contrast to the taller, more prominent stacks found on the Victorian terraces further up the hill above the harbour.

The harbour and the fish market are working areas for much of the day, and a survey of the cottage stacks on the slopes above generally launches from higher ground away from the harbour itself.