h a l f b a k e r yRecalculations place it at 0.4999.
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Here is a real need if someone wants to build a business...
My house has a basement, three floors and an attic.I see light coming through the roof into my attic. It is about 9m to the top gutters, so it would take a lot of scaffolding to get up there. I have been standing on a ladder, looking through
a Velux window, and I can just about reach the missing slate with 4 drain rods screwed together. I was thinking I might make something a bit like a clipboard that could hold a slate or single and push it into place, but it is too far away and the drain rods are not stiff enough for that.
I have repaired slates using tingles and using Hall hooks. There are plenty of videos on using both if you want to see what is involved. It is not a difficult job if it wasn't for the height. If you are doing this by drone, you would need to measure the gap, remove the nails with a slate ripper, nail in the new tile fixing, then put in the slate.
There are even easier but less professional repairs where you replace the missing slate with a sticky patch. This isn't a brilliant fix but it is better than the wet getting inside.
If you had an end of life slate roof, you get the scaffolding and the professionals. There is a huge cost for hiring and putting up the scaffolding and ladders, and getting to the first slate, but if you replace lots of slates then the cost per slate is reasonable. The drone would be used when you have one or two slipped slates on an otherwise good roof.
Drones could do the whole job while hovering, but it might be easier if they put a hook over the ridge and stand on the roof while making the repair.
I have seen how the National Trust clears gutters on stately homes. They have to put up scaffolding as the gutters are pretty high, and may be fairly old, and move slowly around the whole building. If you have a drone with some sort of motorised scooper, it could work its way along the gutter semi-automatically, throwing down the muck to be caught below. That is probably an easier job than repairing slipped slates.
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The drone gets your slate to the required height, but then it still needs to be positioned with precision and surprising force. This is likely not achievable with the cheaper end of drone tech. Can you not rent a cherry-picker style vehicle and go slide in the required slate for less than scaffolding? |
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The kind of drone required might be better climbing than flying, or, the more I think about it, this is clearly an application for trained monkeys. |
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The trained monkeys might also enjoy //throwing down the muck//. |
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The drone has the option of parking on the roof. If I was building one, I would have a platform underneath the drone adjusted to the angle of the roof. The drone could drop an anchor on the ridge and then belay itself from that, and stand on the roof. It might then use powered wheels to move about. |
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I have replaced slates. The slates can be heavy. The replacement one for my house is 6" wide and weighs 1 kg. A bigger one may be 4 kg. The bigger hobby drones can lift 100 kg, so I will only need a medium one. Once the drone has landed on the roof, the job is almost 2-dimensional. You take out the existing slates and nails; you position and nail in the gadget to hold the replacement; you then push the slate into position. Some mechanism that can tap in nails can also work a slate ripper to take out the old ones, and tap the new slate home. |
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I think the drone could do the whole job while hovering, but it would be much easier and and less stressful to park it on the roof. |
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I don't think a cherry-picker is going to work here. My front garden slopes up to the house, and only has foot access. The house has a basement, three stories and an attic. It is 9m to the gutters. I could touch the missing slate hole from the Velux window in the roof with four drain rods screwed together (I was trying a non-drone solution). So, what you are talking about is a siege engine, unless your cherries are epic.. |
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I like 'Flying Monkeys' as a product name. |
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//I don't think a cherry-picker is going to work here.// |
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50' boom lift is a fairly standard unit to rent. They cruise in the $500-600/day range from memory. |
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