so ive been doing roofing inspections for about two years now mostly with a mini 3 pro and honestly its been fine for basic stuff, finding obvious damage, missing shingles, that kind of thing. but lately ive been getting asked about moisture intrusion and thats where im hitting a wall because you just cant see that stuff with a regular camera no matter how good the resolution is.

been looking at the mavic 3 thermal or maybe even going the zenmuse route if i can justify the cost. the problem is the thermal addon options are either cheap and kind of garbage or expensive as hell and i dont know if the ROI makes sense for a solo operator doing maybe 15-20 roofs a month. anyone actually using thermal for commercial roofing work and is it actually giving you useful data or is it one of those things that sounds better in theory

thermal for roofing is genuinely useful but you have to know when to fly. golden hour after a hot day is really the window you want ? the roof has been absorbing heat all day and wet insulation retains it differently than dry material so you actually see the contrast. if you fly midday in full sun you basically get nothing usable because everything reads hot.

i switched from the m3t to a matrice 30t rig about eight months ago and the jump in thermal sensitivity made a real difference. that said for 15-20 residential roofs a month i honestly think the m3t would cover you fine. the zenmuse stuff is more for large commercial flat roofs where you need the wider swath coverage and better radiometric data for reports. what kind of roofs are you mostly doing

not to derail but do you have part 107 for the commercial work? just asking because a guy in my area was doing roof inspections and didnt realize the insurance side of things could get messy without proper certs. anyway thermal sounds cool i might look into it myself