New build snagging survey in Plymouth

Plymouth's most visible new building is the modern waterfront apartment development around Royal William Yard and Millbay, converting former naval and dockyard land into flats with flat roofs, parapets and terraces. Away from the water, new housing has also been going up on the city's edges, extending the post-war estates that already ring the centre, and it is that fringe growth alongside the waterfront apartments that this survey covers.

A waterfront conversion and a fringe estate house are different builds with different roofs to check: one is largely flat sections and parapet detailing several storeys up, the other is a conventional pitched roof on a more ordinary plot, and a survey gets planned around whichever kind of building it actually is.

Plymouth is open to the Sound and to south-westerly gales coming straight off the Channel, and salt-laden wind here reaches well inland across the whole city, not just the immediate seafront. The exposed high suburbs, where a lot of the fringe estate growth sits, catch that weather particularly badly.

That matters for fixings and flashings on a new roof in exactly the way it does on the coast itself: corrosion starts earlier than it would somewhere more sheltered, and a defect that would take years to become obvious elsewhere can move faster here.

Plymouth is built over a series of limestone ridges, so streets climb and fall sharply between the waterfront and the higher suburbs, and even a fringe estate plot is rarely on dead flat ground. That terrain makes scaffolding a bigger job than the roof size alone would suggest, which is a large part of why flying it is worth doing before assuming a physical inspection is the only option.

Plymouth's postcode area runs from PL1 to PL9, a wide spread covering everything from the Hoe and Barbican down by the water to the exposed high suburbs further out, so it is worth naming the specific district, not just the city, when booking. The Hoe, Devonport Dockyard and Sutton Harbour are useful landmarks for placing a waterfront address; the fringe estates this survey mostly serves sit well away from all three.

Saltash, Ivybridge, Tavistock and Kingsbridge, all covered elsewhere on this site, ring the city on different sides, and a plot near any of those boundaries is worth checking against the neighbouring town's page too, since Plymouth's exposure varies considerably between its waterfront and its higher, more exposed suburbs.