Roof inspection in Brooklyn, in plain English.

What we cover in Brooklyn.

Aerial Assess provides roof inspections and assessments across all of Brooklyn, from the village shops down towards Aro Valley, up through the hill streets and out past the Brooklyn turbine ridge. We come out, look at the visible and accessible roof areas, and write up a plain-language assessment letter. Where a roof is too steep or too exposed to reach safely, we use drone access to capture the detail.

Brooklyn's defining feature for roofing is exposure. The suburb sits at altitude on a ridge that catches the full southerly straight off the south coast. Roofs here cycle harder than almost anywhere else in Wellington. Plenty of Brooklyn roofs are in good shape; the wear patterns are just different, and so are the things we look for compared with a sheltered inner suburb.

Brooklyn roofs run the full mix, long-run metal, tile, decramastic and membrane, and each one fails in its own way under this much wind. We identify what's actually up there and tell you what the wear likely means for a roof that gets cycled this hard.

What we typically find on Brooklyn roofs

• Lifted ridge cap pointing, especially on the older tile roofs along the windward (south-facing) slopes. Wind cycling slowly works ridge mortar loose.
• Slipped tiles after big southerlies, often one or two tiles at the worst-exposed corner of the roof.
• End-of-row screw and clip wear on long-run metal roofs. Wind suction concentrates at the edges, and that's where fixings tire first.
• Flashing fixings worked loose around chimneys, dormers and parapets, particularly on heritage homes near Brooklyn Hill.
• Coating wear on weather-facing slopes of decramastic and older long-run metal roofs.
• Aged underlay on the original villa-era homes, often visible from inside the roof space.
• Moss and lichen on the more sheltered north slopes, particularly under tree cover near the town belt.

Hill sections, steep roofs, and wind.

Brooklyn is one of the suburbs where "the roof was not accessed" turns up most often in building reports. Hill-section homes are often two storeys above ground on the downhill side, the pitches are typically steep, and many of the older homes have fragile tile that is easily damaged. None of those problems go away if you send a bigger ladder.

Drone access does. We can hover within a metre of the roof from multiple angles, photographing ridge details, chimney flashings, valley boards and parapets. We photograph every accessible surface up close, from angles you can't get from a ladder. For Brooklyn specifically, this is what lets us give you a complete written assessment without putting any load on the roof.

For more on this, see our guide on why building inspectors can't access steep Wellington roofs.