Drone chimney survey in Teignmouth

Teignmouth's Georgian and Regency terraces sit right on the front with rendered parapets and cornices typical of the period, Victorian villas climb the slopes behind, and seafront apartment conversions plus post-war housing on the higher ground at Broadmeadow carry a mix of flat roofs and more conventional stacks. The port and resort layout here means a stack's exposure can change sharply within a very short distance, from a sheltered rear street to a front-line seafront elevation.

Teignmouth is directly exposed to easterly gales driving up the Channel, which is unusual for Devon and catches out stack detailing designed with only the prevailing south-westerly in mind. Salt reaches the whole front, and the railway sea wall regularly overtops in weather from that quarter, which means flashing and pointing on the east-facing side of a front-terrace stack can be under a kind of load its own construction never really anticipated.

A survey focused only on the seaward face of a Teignmouth stack, the side that is visible and gets the attention, can miss exactly the east-facing detail that the town's unusual wind direction actually works hardest. A close aerial pass photographs every face of the stack, not just the obvious one, which matters more here than in a town with a single, predictable weather direction.

The Ness, the red sandstone headland across the water at Shaldon, and the passenger ferry linking the two sides of the estuary both shape how this town is laid out, with the working port and the resort front sitting close together rather than separated the way they are in some coastal towns. Shaldon bridge, a little further up the estuary, marks roughly where the town's more exposed seafront stock gives way to calmer, more sheltered streets.

Dawlish, Newton Abbot and Torquay are all close by and all covered on their own pages, useful if a Teignmouth booking can be paired with a nearby survey to keep travel sensible.

Flat roofs on the seafront conversions handle a stack junction quite differently to the pitched slate roofs further up the slopes behind the front, generally with an upstand and a felt or single-ply detail rather than a traditional lead flashing, which is worth bearing in mind when booking a survey for a converted seafront property rather than a Georgian terrace house.

Front-line Georgian and Regency stacks along the esplanade often carry more elaborate pot and parapet detailing than the plainer Victorian villas on the slopes behind, reflecting how much more visible, and how much more exposed, a seafront stack was always going to be from the moment it was built.

The seafront and the pier area are busy for much of the year, and a survey of a front-line terrace stack is usually planned around a quieter time of day rather than the middle of a summer afternoon.