ydqa ep 12

John: [00:00:00] What kind of applications or, uh, tools from that drone itself are you using as you, as you inspect homes,

Jason Koonce: 3D thermal models,

seeing moisture detection and energy loss is a big deal. Understanding what's going on, why it's going on, and then being able to explain it to someone so that they can clearly see it. And get the right fix in the first time.

John: Hello and welcome back to another episode of Your Jerome. Questions Answered. I'm John Dicko here to answer your drone questions, speaking of which I have with me Jason Kuns here to answer the question how drones are used for inspections. Jason, you're the owner at 1 0 7 Technologies, which I understand you do a lot of aerial inspections.

Thanks for joining me today. Thank

Jason Koonce: you for having me. I really appreciate it. Can

John: you just sort [00:01:00] of introduce yourself a little bit in terms of what you do? With inspections and, and how you use drones in general and how you kind of got into it as well.

Jason Koonce: Inspections, aerial inspections, really your home is the most important thing for both.

Um, you and your family. Businesses operate out of them, and so they really need a good view of what's going on with the buildings that they're in and to make a house of home. You need the roof to protect it. You need the walls to stand. So what I do is I provide an aerial service to provide a view that you just can't get in any other way to know what's going on visually as well as, um, uh, from a thermal perspective.

So that you can have the safest and best home, uh, possible. I've worked in roofing and a few other things and um, and sitting around one night I was, you know, it's middle of the summer and my wife and I were talking about how we need to keep, get the house a little bit cooler. And we were talking about a friend of ours who, um, had just replaced her windows and it didn't [00:02:00] really change any of her thermal stuff.

Well, she had hired a guy to come out and take a look. Oh yeah, you have older windows. Which was true, and so change 'em out, get a little bit more energy efficient. You'll be good to go. Well, the problem was, is she changed out the windows, spent multiple thousands of dollars and it didn't impact her bill very much.

So she has a insulation guy come and the only insulation guy's like, well, you've got a good bit. But it wouldn't hurt to put more, they put more in, spent a couple thousand dollars there and it helped, but only a little. And that's when I decided that I could actually provide a particular service. I can look at the house in a way that none of those experts were, and by being unassociated with them, it would be an honest review.

Hey, you need insulation, or you, in the case of her, you need to pull the, the insulation off the soffit so your roof can breathe. Whatever the case may be. I can tell you [00:03:00] who to call without having to spend thousands of dollars to do it.

John: Just tell me in general, how are you using a drone to do your work?

Jason Koonce: Seeing moisture detection and energy loss is a big deal, right? If you have, uh, if you've got a hole in your roof and you've got a size this big, um, of water on it, Well, if you go at the right times, you can start to see that from a thermal drone. Go into an attic, haunt it down, whatever the case may be, verify it, take care of it for pennies on the dollar in comparison to not knowing it's there and going out there years later to get your roof done.

And now you have to redex half the house or you have rotten rafters. It helps people to. See what's going on with their home, know what they need to focus on in order to improve it, because money quit growing on trees years ago. Mm-hmm. And since that's the case, we [00:04:00] all need a way to effectively take care of our home and maintain our homes, but at the same time, we don't need to be spending thousands of dollars on the wrong solution just because it was right for someone else.

I mean, what do,

John: what kind of applications or, uh, tools from that drone itself are you using as you, as you inspect homes? So,

Jason Koonce: a recent one of mine that I did, and, um, and, and I actually, I shared a picture with you. It was a really bad roof. It needed to be redone and they redid it. And the roofer that did it did an excellent job of calculating the correct amount of ment.

That's the right there at the top. It, it gets ventilated. It's the most efficient. Manufacturers recommend it. Well, if you look at the house, there's a lot of angles, okay. And there's a lot of, um, uh, of various pi pitches all around the house. And the airflow wasn't efficient, not because the bridge vent wasn't put correctly, but just because of the way that the house is.[00:05:00]

So the homeowner noticed that his living areas were still very, very warm. So he, he then calls someone else out and says, Hey look, you know, there's just not enough airflow in my attic. It's so hot up there. Add two turbines. So you can see in the picture that there's two turbines right there at the top, just below the ridge vent.

Well, if you look at the thermal, after he did that, you can see that his living areas were still warm. Now the really dark red on the left, ignore those. Those were just from the low sun angle. But if you look just below the turbines, you can see a little bit of red there. And I, it was all verified. I was in that attic.

I verified the, the, the unusually high temperatures for it, for that attic. So, um, I take the drone and I go up and I look down, and immediately I see it because I didn't know that he had the two turbines. It was a [00:06:00] multi-story house. You can't really see much of the roof from the ground. And so once I got the drone up, immediately I recognized it.

I didn't need the thermal, but the homeowner does and the reason is the ho most homeowners like this one, he just knew he needed more air, so he hired someone to put some turbines up. Problem is when you do that, you need to make sure that the airflow is correct. If you look in that thermal picture, you can see that the two turbines are kind of green.

Mm-hmm. They were cooler than the ridge mint just above it. So what was happening in any roofer worth of salt will tell you air's coming into the turbines instead of out and out the ridge vent, cuz the ridge mint is higher, right heat rises. So it was creating a circular effect of cooler and warmer air in that location and just below it, warm air was trapped, keeping the living areas [00:07:00] warmer.

And so showing that to 'em. Now we can see clearly that if you're going to put the turbines in for the increased airflow, you need to remove the ridge vent. You can buy a, um, a pack of that particular ridge vent, 50, 60 bucks, get up there, nail it on. That's a lot cheaper than hiring a roofer to come out and redo half your roof and things like that.

So that's where. Those particular applications can come in, understanding what's going on, why it's going on, and then being able to explain it to someone so that they can clearly see it and get the right fix in the first time.

John: That is awesome. And I thank you so much for sharing these pictures and, and describing them for our, uh, audience, uh, uh, who are listening, uh, because.

I mean, this really showcases the advantages to using a drone, uh, for inspections. I mean, I don't think you would've gotten this type of insight, this proof for the customer and also just, [00:08:00] you know, confirmation for yourself and the work you do without a drone. You

Jason Koonce: know, if you climb up a ladder, you're gonna need to get your little, uh, pitch hooks and everything else, and tie off and rope up.

And as you climb up, You still have the possibility of slipping, now you're walking on the shingles, which means you're taking granules off, reducing the life of them. Mm-hmm. Insurance is more expensive because now you have a, uh, you know, workman's comp is different and all those very expensive aspects of running a business because of safety.

Whereas I took my drone and yes, it's insured and there's still safety aspects to consider. Mm-hmm. But instead of spending half an hour to get ready to climb up on a roof and walk it and come back down, I instead put my drone up and five minutes later had everything I needed to show. And the only thing endangered was the drone, not me, not my customer.

No one on the ground. My drone was the closest thing [00:09:00] to anything in danger. But because I'm watching my drone, I knew my weather and I kept, um, and you know, being on the lake and everything else, with all the extra wind and everything else, I didn't have to worry about a super strong wind gust knocking me off, balances the drone just stayed there, might have moved a little bit and then come back.

It's so much safer. Yeah,

John: that's awesome. That's, that's just so cool to hear. It's just, uh, an awesome application for a drone. Can I ask you what type of drone you

Jason Koonce: use? Yes, I have the MA three enterprise thermal. Okay. Um, I specifically chose that one because, um, you know, there's other ones that are, that are capable.

But I like that one in particular because, um, I was also able to put an R T K on it and I have been, um, doing 3D thermal models. And so that was the only one that I, I saw that I could easily, well, somewhat easily do that with, and that way it provides that [00:10:00] whole thermal envelope in something that a customer can recognize and see.

Oh yeah, that window there. I know what that is. Because otherwise it's just a whole bunch of flat pictures. It's like, what was it? Is that the front or the side? I don't remember. Well, now, you know.

John: You found a drone that has specific features that will really help you out. So it's infrared Yes. And the 3D feature there.

So that's, that's incredible. Any other like cool features you use with it?

Jason Koonce: So, um, you know, it, of course I do some mapping and stuff like that. You can get that elevation data, which is really great. Even with, uh, between both thermal and visual to see where water runoff is. There's a gentleman nearby that, um, he has a creek nearby.

And so he built up and he has ear, you know, he's got lots of, uh, culverts and everything else. And it should be by traditional design running off fine and not creating erosion. Well, I mapped it out and um, once and then we sat down and we [00:11:00] went over it together and I was able to draw out areas. And, um, and show him and actually, uh, drone Launch Academy, um, uh, the, the, the mapping course, you know, the, uh, David does a great job of showing you how to import that into Google Earth.

So I drew it all out and sent it to him on Google Earth and um, and he was able to then start playing with it so that he could figure out between the information I provided, the insight I provided, and then our discussion, he was able to then, Figure out exactly where he went wrong in his previous design of the culverts to then stop the erosion of his land.

Those are the use applications in inspections right there, and you gotta find value, and it has to be actual value, not perceived value. You and I as drone operators, as inspectors, as photographers, or anything else, we will always perceive the value in our product. But the customer has to [00:12:00] realize it. So what is the real value to them?

And when you find that, that's your application for inspections, because anything manmade is gonna need an inspection. Anything that is natural is gonna need observation. And when you combine those two together, there's your inspection niches right there. You find one, you see a problem, you go after it, you create your own niche.

As long as it has an actual value, not just a perceived form. It's

John: a fantastic perspective, I think, um, and finding your niche and, and finding a way to do something with drones that no one else is really, uh, you know, finding for themselves. So, yeah. Thank you. Anything else you would say, uh, about what, you know, you use with drones or, or even better yet, a little inspiration for other people who are looking to find their own niche with the drone?

Jason Koonce: So take what you know and, you know, see what the problems are in that particular one, right? What are the things that people need solved? You hear in the drone [00:13:00] community all the time, you, you're there to solve a problem, not fly a drone. And that's very true. The drone is nothing but a tool. But that's a very unique tool, right?

You're not gonna ask a plumber to go out with a backhoe and a blow torch to take care of a sink pipe. So it's a specific tool. Find the niche, find the issue that you know about, that you have knowledge of that you can then fix with that drone. That's my first P piece of advice. Mm-hmm. My second one is practice.

Practice practicing, and you hear it all the time. N I S T has a standard. If you don't know how to practice, like I didn't, they have a standard. Go get the buckets, make 'em go. Practice the course, set it up in different areas with different obstacles, but practice, practice, practice. And the third thing is don't be afraid to crash.

It's gonna happen. So just, just embrace it, learn how to deal with it and learn how to, uh, handle it that way when it does happen, [00:14:00] you don't cause as much damage to your drone or anyone nearby, and you can, as odd as it is to say it, do it in the safest po possible manner because you now you're prepared.

John: Yep. Experience. That's, mm-hmm. That's key. Jason, thank you so much for being here and having this conversation of how drones are used for inspections. We'd love to have you on the show again, uh, you're, uh, a bounty of knowledge here with this kind of stuff, and I think there's so much more we can talk about.

But we're, we're limited on our time. So Jason Koontz, uh, owner 1 0 7 Technologies. Thank you very much. Thank you. You can submit your own questions on, uh, Anything you'd like to know about drones, uh, submit them. You can submit them@ydqa.io and I will find the person who can answer it. In the meantime, we'll see you in the sky.