Anyone with a Part 107 and a $759 drone can fly over a roof. The difference between a drone-equipped adjuster who gets repeat carrier work and one who gets quietly dropped from rosters comes down to the workflow — the systematic sequence that produces photos that hold up in subrogation, satisfy the carrier's QA team, and capture every covered loss without requiring a return trip.
This is the workflow I use and what I've watched the best CAT adjusters run. It assumes you've got your Part 107, a working drone with a 4K camera, and a homeowner who agreed to the inspection. Everything else is the system.
One overarching rule: the carrier doesn't care how cool your drone footage looks. They care about whether your photos prove (or disprove) the loss in a way that survives a re-inspection. Document like the case is going to subrogation, because some of them will.
The single biggest unforced error in drone roof work is showing up without checking the conditions for flight. Wasted trips kill profitability. Do this the night before.
Drones don't fly well in winds above 20 mph sustained. Most consumer drones (DJI Mini 4 Pro, Air 3) start losing position-hold around 22 kt and become uncontrollable around 28 kt. Light rain grounds you — most drones aren't water-resistant. Storm passage matters too: 6 hours of clear weather after a heavy rain is usually fine, but a wet roof produces glare that washes out hail strikes in photos.
Sources to check:
If the property is anywhere near Class B (large metro), Class C (mid-size city), or Class D (small towered airport), you need LAANC authorization before launch. The Aloft app (free) handles it in 30 seconds for most controlled airspace under 400 ft. Do this the night before so you don't discover at the property that you can't fly.
Even if you've called ahead, knock when you arrive. Introduce yourself, confirm the homeowner is OK with the inspection, ask if there are any specific damage areas they're worried about. This 5-minute conversation produces information you'll miss otherwise: "the leak's been in the back bedroom" tells you which slope to scrutinize hardest.
Ask: "Has anyone been on the roof since the loss? Any temporary repairs (tarps, sealant)?" Temporary repairs hide damage and complicate causation analysis.
Look for: open area at least 25 ft from any obstacle, away from power lines, off the homeowner's property if possible (driveway, sidewalk, public area), with clear sky view for GPS acquisition. Avoid:
If you've driven more than 100 miles since the drone's last flight, re-calibrate the compass. Most apps prompt you when needed. This takes 2 minutes and prevents one of the most common flyaway scenarios.
This is where most adjusters lose carrier credibility — they fly randomly, grab some photos, hope they got everything, and find out three days later they missed the south slope. Use a repeatable sequence so nothing gets missed.
Start at 50-75 ft AGL, drone positioned over the front yard, facing the house. Then:
That's 4 overview shots from 4 angles. Add one true overhead at 100 ft AGL of the entire structure. You now have 5 establishing photos that prove you covered the whole roof.
Now drop to 20-25 ft AGL above each slope and capture detail shots. For each slope:
Multiply by 4-8 slopes depending on roof complexity. Most residential roofs need 12-30 detail photos. CAT shingle roof with a single hail event = closer to 20. Complex slate with multiple loss types = 30+.
These are the shots that distinguish "thorough" from "lawsuit-proof":
State Farm, Allstate, USAA, Farmers, and Liberty Mutual all want similar things from drone documentation. Most don't publish formal standards, but consistent carrier feedback over the past three years tells us:
On at least 3-5 close-up damage photos, include a measurable reference for scale. Standard options:
Scale references prevent the carrier QA from rejecting your photos as "indeterminate dent size."
Beyond just photographing damage, your shots need to support a defensible cause-of-loss determination. The three common scenarios:
Carriers care intensely about cause determination because it determines whether the claim is covered, partially covered, or denied. Your photos need to support whichever cause you assign in your report. A "wind" assignment with photos of clearly random hail impacts will get the file kicked back.
Before you leave the property, write down (paper, app, voice memo — pick one and stick with it):
At home (not in your truck — files corrupt on the move):
Never edit photos before carrier upload. Brightness adjustments, crops, and color corrections can be flagged as evidence tampering by adversarial subrogation work. If you need to enhance a shot for clarity, do it in addition to (not instead of) the original. Submit both versions clearly labeled.
Part 107 is the gating credential. Without it, you're flying recreationally and your photos aren't admissible in a claim. GetDroneReady is a Part 107 prep tool built by an adjuster for adjusters — focused on the regulations and chart-reading skills you actually need.
Adjusters get 20% off with code ADJUSTER20 — that's $37.60.
See the adjuster page →A ladder-only adjuster does 3-5 roofs per day in good weather. The same adjuster with this workflow consistently does 6-10. During CAT deployments where you're billing per claim, that's the difference between $1,250 and $2,500 in a day. Multiplied across a 14-day storm rotation, it's the difference between an okay deployment and a great one.
The drone is the easy part. The workflow is the moat. Adjusters who treat drone work as "let me fly around for a few minutes and grab some photos" produce inconsistent documentation, miss covered damage, and get quietly dropped from rosters when carrier QA flags repeat issues. Adjusters who run a systematic sequence — same shots, same altitudes, same documentation standard every time — become the ones IA firms call first.
The carriers don't care about your aerial videography skills. They care about whether your photos prove the loss. Build the workflow. Run it the same way every time. The repeat work follows.