Storm damage roof inspection in Teignmouth

Most roof detailing along this stretch of coast is built with a south-westerly gale in mind, because that is the prevailing direction almost everywhere else covered. Teignmouth is different: sitting at the mouth of the Teign with the Ness headland across the water, it takes the full force of an easterly gale driving straight up the Channel, a direction many older roofs were never specifically weathered against.

That matters because a flashing, an overlap or a verge detail that has coped with decades of south-westerly weather can fail on its first serious easterly, simply because it was never under load from that direction before. It is not that the roof is weaker, it is that the storm is testing a side of it nothing has tested in years.

The Georgian and Regency terraces on the front sit close behind the long sea wall, which regularly overtops in an easterly storm surge, throwing salt water directly at the lower floors and roofs of the nearest buildings rather than just carrying it on the wind. Seafront apartment conversions with flat roof sections take this hardest, since standing salt water on a flat roof does more damage than the same spray hitting a pitched slate slope.

Villas on the slopes behind, and post-war housing further up towards Bishopsteignton road, see a more conventional pattern of ridge and verge failure, but even there the easterly angle means the sheltered-looking side of a house is sometimes the side that actually took the damage.

Because an easterly storm here catches roof elevations that are not the ones usually assumed to be at risk, a flown survey covering every side of the building is worth more in Teignmouth than in a town with one obvious exposed face. Assuming the sea-facing slope is the only one to check is exactly how genuine damage on the landward side gets missed.

The Teign estuary and the ferry crossing mean the town also sees storm-driven flooding at low-lying points near the water, which can complicate access in the days right after a storm. Flying the roof removes that problem entirely and gets the whole property recorded in one visit regardless of what the ground conditions are doing.

The Ness headland across the water at Shaldon takes the same easterly exposure from the opposite bank of the estuary, connected to Teignmouth by the ferry and the bridge, and a claim covering properties on both sides is flown in the same visit. The TQ14 postcode runs from the seafront right back to the higher ground towards Bishopsteignton, all of it reachable inside the same short flight.