Visual and thermal drone inspection of roofs and building envelopes, across the UAE. Most roof problems are found when water appears on a ceiling, by which point the ingress point and the damage are rarely in the same place.
A thermal survey finds the wet insulation itself. Water trapped in a roof build-up holds heat longer than the dry material around it, so after sunset the saturated areas stay warm and show up as clear shapes against a cooling roof — usually much larger than the visible stain below, and often nowhere near it.
Flown after sunset, deliberately
Timing is not a detail here. The survey depends on the roof having absorbed heat through the day and then losing it, so the window is the couple of hours after sunset while the wet and dry areas are still separating thermally. Flown at noon the roof is uniformly hot and the survey shows nothing.
We fly a grid at fixed altitude so the whole roof is covered at consistent ground resolution with proper overlap, and we capture visual imagery on the same route and to the same coordinates. A warm patch in the thermal set can then be matched to what is physically there — a ponding area, a failed lap joint, a blocked outlet, a split at an upstand.
Beyond the roof deck
The same flight covers the parts of a building that are awkward from the ground: parapets, upstands, plant screens, gutters and rainwater outlets, and the junctions where the roof meets a wall. On an occupied building all of it is captured without a cherry picker in the car park or anyone on a ladder.
Positions are fixed with RTK or PPK, so the imagery is georeferenced and this survey registers against the last. Where a roof is being monitored through a repair programme, that makes the before and after directly comparable rather than approximately so.
Assessment
Capture is ours. For roofing and envelope work we work with a building surveyor who reviews the imagery and issues the assessment, so you receive a considered opinion rather than a set of pictures. Where you already have a surveyor engaged, we deliver the imagery in the formats they work in and leave the judgement with them.
A thermal anomaly indicates a temperature difference, not a diagnosis. Trapped moisture, a thermal bridge and a patch of different material can all read similarly, which is exactly why the interpretation sits with someone qualified. We do not issue defect registers and we do not classify faults automatically.
What you get
- A thermal survey of the whole roof, georeferenced and flown in the correct window
- Matching visual imagery to the same coordinates
- Coverage of parapets, upstands, outlets and roof-to-wall junctions
- Repeat surveys flown from identical waypoints, so a repair can be verified against the original
- Everything in the AirTech Portal, where you can measure on the imagery and compare any two dates
AirTech is a registered RPAS operator across all seven emirates with DCAA and GCAA certified pilots and USD 5 million public liability, and we handle the permits — including the approvals needed to fly over an occupied building at night.
Roofs are one of five asset types across our drone inspection services. Where the walls matter as much as the deck, this is usually flown with facade inspection on the same visit.
