Every clip is a hole in the part of your house that keeps water out.
Roofline lighting should be fastened into solid fascia below the drip edge, sealed at every fastener, and kept clear of the soffit vents. The fascia is the board along the roof edge that holds the eavestrough; the drip edge is the metal strip that steers water off the shingles into it; the soffit is the vented underside of the overhang that feeds your attic air.
That's the same for every brand on the comparison page. A lighting company that has never worked on a roof is being paid to put dozens of fasteners into the most water-sensitive part of your house.
We get called to fix every one of these.
The channel fastens into solid fascia below the drip edge, sealed at every fastener, clear of the soffit's vented area. Where the fascia is aluminum over rotten wood (very common on 1970s and 80s Calgary houses), we tell you before we mount anything to it.
Sometimes the fascia needs replacing before lighting goes on it. We'd rather do the fascia first and the lighting second than mount a permanent system to a board that's failing.
If you're re-roofing anyway, this is the moment. New fascia, drip edge, eavestrough and the lighting channel planned together is one set of decisions and one install. Retrofitting later is doable, just more work.
Permanent roofline lighting is four parts: a slim channel mounted along the roof edge, a run of LEDs inside it that can each be set to their own colour, a low-voltage power supply, and a controller you run from an app. It stays up year-round, and the connectors, seals and electronics usually limit its life more than the LEDs do.
Permanent lights should fasten into sound fascia or solid soffit below the metal drip edge at the roof's edge, never through your shingles or roof deck, and stay clear of the soffit vents your attic breathes through. On a Calgary roof edge, where water drains and ice builds every winter, every fastener also has to be sealed.
It can, if someone else does it. Most roofing workmanship warranties, ours included, exclude damage from third-party holes in the roof assembly. When we do the lighting, it's our fasteners and our responsibility.
Usually, as long as the wood behind it is sound. Aluminum fascia is a cover, not structure, so the fasteners have to reach solid wood. If that wood is rotten, that gets dealt with first.
Not when it's planned. The channel goes below the drip edge and clear of the trough's back edge, so water still runs where it should.
The channel stays clear of the soffit vents. Blocking them chokes the attic's air supply, which cooks shingles in summer, frosts the roof boards in winter, and causes ice dams at the edge.
Priced per linear foot of roofline. Add your address and tell us how much of the house you want lit.
