Pole Cam – Residential Surveys etc.

By Nathan Foley | 14 February 2020 | Home Buyers Survey, Home Heroes

Our aerial inspection camera (Pole Cam) enables detailed views of hard to reach areas. It is a favourite of building inspectors, surveyors, roofers and contractors. The camera produces high-quality pictures and videos which can be streamed to multiple mobile devices with an option to save them for future reference. They are often referred to as Mast Camera mostly referred by our surveyors as ‘Pole Cams’ we use a fibreglass model which has about 10m additional heights at arm’s length and increases our ability to see and view defects considerably. You can see a lot of these defects we pick up pop up on our google my business page.

The Pole Cam in all it’s glory!

Pole Cam - Level 3 Survey
Pole Cam – Level 3 Survey

We get asked lots of questions about our pole cam, in fact when in operation the most common question is what are we doing with an enormous “selfie stick” and the truth is it does look a bit like this but we use an 18MP Sony lens and this allows us to get some great shots of what is going on when it comes to surveys, now we don’t charge extra for using this technology they accompany us to all surveys the only reason we don’t use them is safety, be that operator safety (Bad Back, Sholder etc) the public busy footpaths and roads or more than likely very poor weather at 10m extension it doesn’t take a lot for you to feel your being pulled back.

So why use a pole cam and not a drone?

Well this is easy here at Home Heroes we are big advocates of drone’s and technology and that is why we have launched our Drone Survey Service after all you can’t see everything from the ground but they can be difficult to use particularly in very urban area’s our drone specialists are experienced pilots (it’s one of the reasons it’s not a building surveyor flying your drone) but there are a lot of conditions when the drone can’t be flown that have nothing to do with weather such as situations where they can’t get the required radius under there control for whatever reason. There is also one other real benefit in residential surveying of the pole cam over our drone service for you our potential client, it’s sitting in the car ready to be actioned setting it up takes mear minutes and we can have a good view of your roofline, chimney or parapet wall. This very fact means it costs you nothing extra for us to use, it the same as when we whip out the thermal imaging camera or 360 camera for additional images no extra charge but they each have dedicated services which are needed, the drone by its nature is costly and a specialist licenced piece of technology so we have chosen to partner on it rather than upskill our surveyors.

Cracked Roof Valley Example Image from the Pole Cam

What about just using binoculars?

We do in fact we use them quite a lot they are great tools but for one usage example who are we meant to see sarking felt overlap in gutters from the ground? we can’t not even with binoculars but with the good old pole cam we can and this is why it’s still an important tool don’t get me wrong binoculars are important they help us see a lot and in fact, I may even do a short blog on them or my wife’s suggestion of “tool of the week/month” considering we have so many. Every single one of our tools has usages but this one has been used for several different things in the last couple of days more below

Use cases are varied, we use them to look at roofs, tiles, roof lights, gutters (a particular bugbear of mine if you read our social media….and another blog post I am sure) parapet walls, but I have also used them to read high up Tell Tales to save the working at height, I’ve used it to look at lined valleys to see if there are any cracks and issues, I’ve used it to look at high-level cracks…… I even recently got it through a cavity with the 360 camera on it to check the condition of some wago’s in a small space. which was almost impossible to see.

Erosion and blocked gutters on a Metal roof pole cam images

As you can see from the various uses are almost unlimited and have extra uses popping up all the time

Erosion and blocked gutters on a Metal roof pole cam images

So why not book your residential, dilapidation or commercial survey today, so we have another opportunity to use the pole cam, one of our services where the pole cam is particularly useful is our Listed Building Surveys and historic building consultancy

Home Heroes Limited are a Construction Consultancy based in Canterbury, Kent Specialising as Party Wall SurveyorsBuilding Surveyors Canterbury and Historic Building Consultants you can contact us by filling in the contact form, emailing info@home-heroes.co.uk or calling 01227 806334

We cover Canterbury, Margate, Ramsgate, Whitstable, Herne Bay, Folkestone, Dover, Deal, Ash, Sandwich, Faversham, Sittingbourne and Other Kent Locations for all Our Party Wall, Building Surveys, Home Buyer Reports.