Commercial roof inspections for the Suncoast, flown from the air
Salt off the Gulf and storms like Milton put Suncoast roofs through it. We fly commercial and industrial roofs across Sarasota, Bradenton, and the barrier islands with FAA certified drones and hand back located damage, real measurements, and a report your roofer or carrier can act on. Nobody sets foot on the membrane.
On the Suncoast, the roof is the part that gets tested
Two things age a Sarasota commercial roof faster than the brochure admits: the Gulf and the storms. Salt in the air off Longboat and Siesta works on flashing and fasteners for years, and then a season like 2024 arrives and puts the whole thing to the test in an afternoon. The roofs that come through are usually the ones somebody was actually watching.
Watching them is easier from the air. One flight takes the camera across the whole roof, a few feet above the seams, the parapets, the drains, and every rooftop unit. For a manager running retail on University Parkway or a medical building in Lakewood Ranch, that means finding the lifted edge or the ponding while it’s still a repair.
A certified, insured pilot flies every job and clears the SRQ Class C ring before takeoff. You end up with a usable record for your roofer and your carrier, not a stack of pretty overheads.
A roof survey built for a claim or a repair
Every inspection here is scoped to the reason behind it. A manager pricing a Bradenton repair needs something different from an owner fighting a barrier-island storm claim, so we build the deliverable to match rather than to a fixed package.
- Sharp 4K stills of the full roof, close enough to read a lifted seam or a rusting fastener.
- Every problem pinned to its spot: ponding, blistering, split flashing, salt-eaten metal.
- Measurements taken off the imagery, so a repair or re-roof is scoped on real numbers.
- A written, dated report the carrier and your public adjuster can both open and use.
- The SRQ Class C authorization handled before we launch.
More coverage on the Suncoast
Roofs are most of what we inspect on the Suncoast, but not all of it. If your project is closer to media or mapping, or it sits in another market, start there.
Have a site or an asset that needs documenting?Tell us the asset and the deadline. We’ll scope it and price it.
Sarasota roof inspection questions
Straight answers to what owners and property managers on the Suncoast ask us most.
Can a drone inspection speed up a hurricane insurance claim?
It usually does. When Milton came ashore near Siesta Key in 2024 it left a lot of Sarasota and Bradenton owners fighting the same battle at once, and the ones with dated, located imagery of their roof moved to the front of the line. We give the adjuster dated 4K keyed to each spot on the roof, plus a written rundown of what we found, so the claim is about evidence instead of memory.
Do carriers here really require a roof report to renew?
More and more, yes. Florida’s insurance market tightened hard after the last few storm seasons, and around Sarasota a current roof condition report is often the price of keeping coverage at all. An aerial survey is a clean way to hand the carrier what it’s asking for without putting a crew on the roof.
Can you fly near Sarasota-Bradenton airport and the barrier islands?
Yes. SRQ sits in the middle of the market and carries Class C airspace, so a job in that ring needs the authorization cleared first, which we handle. Out on Longboat, Lido, and Siesta the airspace opens up, but the salt exposure is worse, so those roofs are often the ones most worth documenting.
What roof types do you see most around Sarasota and Bradenton?
A mix. Low-slope TPO and modified bitumen on the retail and medical buildings along University Parkway and in Lakewood Ranch, older built-up downtown, tile and metal on the coastal commercial stock, and a lot of flat roofs on the newer Manatee County build-out. Salt air off the Gulf is hard on flashing and fasteners on all of them.
How does salt air change what you look for on the islands?
Near the water we see corrosion on fasteners, flashing, and rooftop equipment years before an inland roof of the same age. On Longboat or Anna Maria that’s usually what fails first, well before the field of the membrane, so we put extra attention on the metal and the penetrations.
How fast is turnaround after a storm?
A single building is usually in the air within a few business days, faster when it’s not storm season and everyone in the county is calling at once. For a manager with several sites across Sarasota and Bradenton, we route them together so the whole portfolio gets documented on one trip.
Get your Suncoast roof documented
Give us the address and what you need it for, an estimate, a claim, or a renewal, and we’ll get a certified pilot on it and a number back to you.
100 E Pine St, Suite 110 · Orlando, FL 32801
FAA Part 107 Certified · Fully Insured
Tell us about the roof
Tell us about the building and we’ll reply within a business day.