Introduction

Drones are a work of art and technological marvels at the same time. While they have been standard in the military for decades, in recent years, they have penetrated many industries and one of them is landscape design. You can search for “landscape companies near me” and hire professionals to bring your dream landscape into reality. Let’s check out how drones are used in landscape design and the benefits they bring.

The Details

1. Efficient site mapping – If you have a large property that stretches across a few acres, regular methods of designing would require a lot of manpower and labor. Professionals will have an easy time if they get to work on a large property that’s mostly a blank canvas with a few hedges and trees in sight. However, contours, hills, bushes, and other such elements would add complexities, and just mapping out the area with traditional methods would become a tiring chore.

Drones make things way easier. A landscape architect would need to fly his drone around the property for a few minutes at an altitude of 100ft to 200ft. After that he or she will capture major structures like your home, gardening shed, pool, and more. That data alone is enough to come up with a detailed master plan that is executed in phases. If the architect wants, he or she can spend some more time taking corner measures and ground-level pictures. The whole process wouldn’t take more than an hour and would bring little to no disruption in your daily life.

2. Less site documentation – Before professionals can change your landscape, they need to spend hours measuring the property and collecting all sorts of documentation to validate the same. Usually, you would see an architect with a colleague measuring key reference points like veggies gardens and swimming pools on your property.

After that, elevation points would need to be recorded and taken into account to grade the property. So, the contractor would need to spend at least 10 man hours. The same work can be done with just one person flying a drone for an hour or two. The advantage is even greater for commercial constructions. Workable topo maps and isopach maps of your property with detailed contours can be easily created with drone-generated data by plugging it into software like LandFX and Civil 3D.

That means 3D maps can be generated effortlessly and models of your property with thorough illustrations that even contain elevation details can be created within record time. Maps created from drone data also allow architects to set up and change parameters as they wish. This would allow you to see the skeleton of the proposed project within the first day. Moreover, it would be very close to reality instead of looking at drawings on a sheet.

3. Cost-effective – As mentioned above, landscape drones are far more efficient than humans at mapping and surveying your property. This kind of efficiency doesn’t just save time but reduces costs drastically. There’s no need for bulky survey equipment to be brought to the site anymore. Pros don’t need to waste several hours recording hundreds of data points either. High-resolution data from a high-end drone delivers accuracy up to 2 cm.

Some drones are even advanced enough to do most of the job with little to no manual intervention. Engineers and architects just need to feed the latitudinal and longitudinal data and the drone will map out the site within an hour. A surveyor would take 2 days for the same job. Data processing is also much faster, and proposals can be pulled up within a few hours instead of days.

When contractors are able to save so many man hours, they save a lot of money, and the project cost goes down drastically. That means they can also lower their quote and pass you the benefit to be more competitive in the industry. The cost benefits are way more in a larger commercial site and if you’re a business owner you should be seeing more dollar signs by now.

4. Progress tracking is accurate – When landscape drones are used, you have speed and cost on your side. However, that’s not all. Remember that 2 cm accuracy? Well, drones can make daily site inspections easier and more accurate than ever. Pros can track every little detail and note the tiniest changes as construction goes on.

Landscape drones have high-resolution cameras with a bunch of sensors. This allows pros to zoom in on the landscape and look at what’s happening with drainage ways, ditches, slope cover, rooftops, and more elements of the property. With drones, there’s no reason for in-person inspection and that means workers don’t have an excuse to slack off.

5. Fewer safety risks – Changing your landscape involves a lot of money, manpower, and risks. It starts with the inspection phase and continues through the construction phase. However, the use of drones makes inspection and surveying much safer. There’s no need to use heavy equipment or climb tall heights. This reduces the risk of site injuries. While you may be protected by the contractor’s insurance, no one wants people to get hurt on their property.

6. Better communication – Drones also facilitate better communication between you and the landscape professionals. Drones create details and accurate documentation and 3D maps without any delays. You get to see a more realistic representation of what your property is going to look like and the same holds for changes that need to be made on your property.

This allows for smoother and more transparent communication with the contractor. As a bonus, you also get stunning aerial 4K footage of your changing property. You can use that footage for personal use or for creating marketing material for your business.

Conclusion

Drones help landscape designers in many ways. They help to reduce paperwork and bring down costs. They also apply modern mapping technology and allow landscape architects to come up with phased designs for your property. To hire such professionals for your property you can search for “landscape companies near me”.

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