so ive been doing residential roofing estimates for about 8 years now and a buddy of mine keeps telling me to just get a drone and stop climbing every single roof. i finally caved and picked up a mavic 3 enterprise a few months back and honestly i have mixed feelings

the imagery is great dont get me wrong, the thermal add-on has been useful a couple times for spotting moisture intrusion that i wouldve completely missed on a visual pass. but im running into issues with clients who dont understand what they're looking at when i hand them the report. like they want photos of the damaged shingles and i give them this beautiful orthomosaic and they just stare at it

also workflow wise im still kind of figuring it out. im using dronelink for automated flight plans but on smaller residential roofs it honestly feels like more setup time than just getting on the damn roof. where does this actually start making sense time wise? at what roof size or complexity do you guys find the break even point

yeah the orthomosaic thing is a real problem with residential clients, most of them just want a jpeg they can forward to their insurance adjuster. i stopped giving the fancy outputs for anything under like 4000 sq ft and just do manual waypoints and pull the good stills. saves everyone the confusion

the real ROI for me kicked in when i started doing commercial flat roofs, anything over maybe 15 squares and the drone pays for itself in time saved plus you're not putting boots on a TPO membrane in summer which clients appreciate. for steep pitch residential honestly sometimes ladders are still faster if its a simple gable, i use the drone mainly when i dont want to deal with liability on a really steep or sketchy roof

thermal add on for the mavic 3 enterprise is legit underrated for moisture, ive caught stuff that would have turned into a massive claim later. but yeah i hear you on the workflow, it took me a few months before i stopped feeling like i was spending more time prepping than actually inspecting

one thing that helped me was just building a standard deliverable template so clients always get the same format, couple of annotated overview shots, close ups of problem areas, and one thermal if relevant. keeps it simple and they actually read it now instead of just looking confused