Please keep reading below to find out the most efficient methods on how to fit dry verge.
So we’re about to fit the Redland Ambi-Dry verge system. How to fit dry verge? These units fit on the end of the tile. They’re coloured to match the tile colour itself, and they’re designed to give a mechanical fix, a dry fix to the end of the verge, to the verge on the roof. Each pack comes with ten units – one unit per tile – and then for each verge, we have an eaves-to-ridge closure kit, which we fit at both the eaves and ridge to fix the system in place. We will be installing one Ambi-Dry verge unit per tile running up the verge. There are ten units per pack, and at the top and bottom of the verge, we’ll be installing our eaves-to-ridge closure unit. You purchase one of these per verge.
So when installing our Ambi-Dry verge, the first thing we’ll do is install the eaves closure unit. This fixes the first unit firmly in place. We just pop the unit over the side of the tile here, as close down to the fascia as we can get it, and then we’ll see there are screw holes in the side there, which we can fix it into the roof. Now, in a real roof, we’d have a nice bargeboard at the side here, so we could get a couple of fixings in, but today we’ll just pop the one screw here into the bottom of the unit, to keep it in place.
So the Ambi-Dry units that we’re going to install today aren’t handed. What I mean by that is they’ll work on both the left and right-hand sides of the roof, so we don’t have to install separate systems to work on the left and right. All we do is snap off either one of these flaps here to work on left or right, and we’ll see – it’ll say here – ‘Snap for right hand’, ‘Snap for left hand’. That said, on the first piece we install, we leave both flaps in place. So here we have our eaves closure unit and batten end clip firmly installed, and now we install our first dry verge unit, fixing over the eaves closure unit and lining up with our batten end clip, to install our first fixing. So using the nails provided, we’re going to fix the head of the unit firmly in place, ensuring that the nail goes through the gap in the batten end clip. And that batten end clip will keep that nail from tearing free of the end grain timber.
So we’re fitting the unit to the right-hand side of our verge, which means we need to remove this bottom flap here, where it says ‘Snap for right hand’. Nice and simple. So once we’ve removed the cover for the right-hand fix, it exposes the lug beneath. This small piece of plastic is designed to engage with the top, the grooves in the top of the unit beneath, like so. We’re now going to install our second unit. We’ve taken off the cover to allow us to install it on the right-hand side of the roof, and that lug that we can see there will engage with the groove on the unit beneath. So let’s place the unit over the tile, over the second tile. Ensure the lug is engaged beneath, and then slide it up the roof so the holes on this unit line up with our pre-installed batten end clip.
So when installing the Ambi-Dry verge for the 49 tile, we firstly make sure we’ve got our battens over the end of the roof by 45mm, and that mirrors the width of the Ambi-Dry unit. We have our batten end clips firmly installed onto the end of our batten, and that allows the nail to penetrate into that end grain timber without the danger of tearing the wood away. And then we also want to make sure that while we’re installing, that the tongue and groove here is firmly fixed in place, so these two units can’t pop apart, as the lug is firmly fixed into the groove down there. Put all that together, and what we have is a second fix for our verge, in accordance with BS5534, and a neat appearance along the side of our roof.
So the last thing we do before installing our final unit on the verge is we put in place our ridge closure unit. This sits on top of the Ambi-Dry and snaps firmly in place, and then we fit it as normal.
So now we have all of our Ambi-Dry units installed – one per tile – and we’re going to put our final piece in place with the ridge closure unit fixed on top. We place the lugs, as with all the others, in the holes provided, and slide into place so the holes line up with the batten end clip above. As we can see, that’s firmly fixed – that’s going nowhere. So we have our ridge closure unit firmly clipped onto the final piece of the Ambi-Dry verge. The comb here then interlocks with the comb on the other side of the roof, to keep our beasts, birds and bits out of our roof cavity by forming a barrier here on the gap that’s there. You will not have to ask: "How to fit dry verge?" again!