How to install Roof Battens ready for Verges and Ridges

Batten End Clips

So we’re going to install the first part of our Dry Verge system. The tiles aren’t on the roof yet, but that’s good, because this clip needs to go underneath the tiles. We’re installing it 10mm down from the top of the batten and it’s called the batten end clip. You fix it with the nails provided in the two holes there, and then when we fix our Dry Verge system, the nail will go through the grip in the end of the batten end clip and give it a firm fix on the end of the batten. The reason we need this is because here we have end grain timber, and putting a nail into end grain timber is a dangerous thing because it can tear the wood. If we get a good bit of wind uplift on there, the nail will be pulled into the end grain and it can damage the timber and cause the system to fail. So we install the clip to give it that extra strength. So we place the batten end clip onto the batten around 10mm down, using the nails provided, and we hammer the clip in place.

The Top Batten

So we want one batten end clip per batten at the end of each batten, so all of those dry fix units will be securely fixed into that end grain batten. So now we’ve installed all of our tile battens, except for the top one. We’ve left this one off because our next job is to install the ridge batten to the top of the roof. We’re going to mechanically fix the ridge of this roof – it’s a dry fix roof, but it needs a ridge batten in place to fix those ridge tiles too. They’re fixed in place with a batten strap. That batten strap goes over the ridge batten and then fixes to the rafter underneath the top batten. So obviously, if that top batten is already in place, we can’t install these.

Ridge Batten & Batten Straps

So we’ll take our ridge batten, which is a piece of 38 x 25 standard plane tile timber, place it on the apex of the roof, and then we’ll place our batten straps over the top, firmly securing them to each rafter. So we’ve got a solid piece of timber to fix our ridge to. So with our 50 mm ridge batten in place, we’ll then take the batten strap and bend it like so, to fit over the batten. Bend again down here and place over the batten and over the rafter nice and securely. So with the batten strap firmly in place, we take our nail through one of the pre-formed holes and fix it into the roof.

So we’ve got a firm fix on our ridge batten, and our top batten will fix it firmly in place. We’ll pre-bend and then install these all the way along the ridge line, one above each rafter, before installing our top tile batten.

So now we have the ridge batten firmly installed, we can install the top batten, which will pin down the batten straps and give us an even stronger mechanical fix on our ridge system.