Using a MPP to bodge fix a pooling flat roof

I have a pooling flat roof that I can’t afford to have repaired just yet. So last December to prepare for winter and all the rain we get I installed a 4mm siphon tube to let me drain off the water and reduce the weight.

Due to the proximity of the garden fence and the nature of the roof I can’t get a ladder up there so I used my drone - a DJI Mavic Pro Platinum - to install it.

I attached the end of the tube to a 250g weight disc to hold the end of the tube in place and made a hook under the drone from a cut down Boomco dart (Google it!) and some cut down bamboo skewer held in place with a Velcro wrap. I tried using the rock in the pic as a weight at first but it was over 800g! Amazingly it managed to lift it but as I got higher and it lifted more and more tubing the combined weight got too much and it wouldn’t quite clear the roof. So I ‘borrowed’ a 250g disc from a set of dumbbells. That worked perfectly.

I lifted off into a hover before hooking the weight to the drone - Then up and over the roof and use the camera to get in as close as possible to the centre of the puddle. Then I lowered it slightly to give some slack in the string and backed away to unhook it. Amazingly it worked perfectly!!!

A couple of videos - the drone one is the live feed hence not exactly 4K but you can see what’s going on. Anyone else used their drone for anything weird?

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There must be a “Necessity is the Mother of Invention” Badge here !!!

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That is ingenious :grin:

I suggest that when you do get round to a repair, forget bitumen felt !.
I have just replaced my Garage roof and used EPDM (Butyl), very easy to use and do it yourself for a fraction of the cost of felt.
I use a Company that supplies the whole kit for a DIY job.

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Butyl rubber is a good idea! In my first ever job when I left school way back in 1989 I used to sell pond liners amongst other aquatic things and they used to carry a 20-30 year guarantee depending on thickness. Really tough and UV resistant. Better than roofing felt in every way. It’s on the list of things to do next year and I’ll definitely look into butyl as an option! It’ll be good not having to risk my drone re-doing the siphon every autumn after the seagulls move it around over the summer!!!

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I’ve just checked my remaining weights from my dumbbells and it was actually a 500g disc I used on the roof, not 250g as previously stated. Half a kilo plus the tube - not bad for a MPP!!

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Really off topic, but @chrisjohnbaker, have you got a link for your supplier?

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www.rubber4roofs.co.uk
They even have an online calculator to work out what you require.

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