Drip Edge and Eave Metal Rules in Parker, CO

Drip edge is a strip of formed metal, a few inches wide, that runs along the bottom and side edges of your roof. It costs very little and it is the difference between water leaving your house and water tracking back into it. The Town of Parker requires it at every eave and every rake, with minimum dimensions for each, and it is still one of the first things to disappear from a rushed job.

What Parker Code Requires at the Roof Edge

The Building Division's re-roofing requirements handout is specific. Drip edge is required at all rakes and all eaves. The eave metal must be at least four inches by two inches. The rake metal must be at least two inches by one inch, or a D style profile. Those are minimums, not targets, and larger profiles are common and generally better on a Colorado roof.

The dimensions are not arbitrary. The horizontal leg has to reach far enough back onto the deck to be fastened and covered, and the vertical leg has to hang far enough past the fascia to kick water clear of it. Undersized metal technically exists on the roof while failing to do either job, which is why the code writes the numbers down.

What Edge Metal Actually Does

Four things, none of them optional in this climate:

• It breaks surface tension. Water running off a shingle edge will curl back underneath and travel along the deck. A metal lip forces it to let go and fall into the gutter.
• It protects the deck edge. The exposed edge of plywood or OSB is the most absorbent part of the whole roof. Once it swells and delaminates, the fastening at the perimeter goes with it.
• It protects fascia and soffit. Peeling paint, dark streaks and soft fascia board almost always trace back to missing or undersized edge metal.
• It stiffens the edge against wind. The perimeter is where wind uplift starts. A fastened metal edge gives the first course something rigid to seal against.

The Order of Operations That Separates Real Work From Fast Work

Edge metal has a correct sequence, and it is different at the eave than at the rake. At the eave, the drip edge goes down first, directly on the deck, and the underlayment laps over the top of it, so water on the underlayment drains onto the metal. At the rake, the underlayment goes down first and the drip edge is installed over it, so wind driven water on the metal cannot get under the felt.

Reverse either one and the metal is present but backward, and a homeowner will never know from the ground. Ask the question during the bid. A roofer who can explain the eave over rake sequence without hesitating is telling you something real about how their crew was trained.

Why Drip Edge Goes Missing on Parker Roofs

Three reasons, in rough order of frequency. Older roofs predate the requirement, so plenty of Parker homes built in earlier decades have original roofs with no edge metal at all, and it only becomes a topic at replacement. Second, on storm chase work it is a fast line to skip: it is invisible from the street once gutters are back on, and it saves a trip around the perimeter. Third, partial jobs. A repair or a single slope replacement can leave a house with edge metal on some planes and not others, which is worth remembering if your roof has been worked on more than once.

Parker's rule that partial replacements must include the entire plane and all components exists partly for this reason. Components means components, and edge metal is one of them.

How to Confirm the Edge Metal on Your Roof

This is the rare roofing detail you can check yourself from the ground. Stand back from the house and look at the line where the shingles overhang the fascia. You are looking for a thin, continuous band of metal running under the shingle edge and over the front face of the fascia board, both at the bottom edge of the roof and up the angled sides. If you see shingle overhanging bare wood, there is no drip edge there.

Two more tells. Dark vertical streaking on the fascia under the roof edge means water has been running down the wood rather than into the gutter. Paint that peels only on the fascia and nowhere else on the house means the same thing. Both are cheap to solve during a replacement and expensive to solve as carpentry later. We photograph the perimeter on every Parker roof inspection for exactly this reason.

Gutters, Gutter Apron and the Overlap Question

One more sequencing note that costs Parker homeowners money every year: gutters usually have to come off, or at least be loosened, for eave metal to be installed correctly. A crew that leaves the gutters bolted tight and slides the metal in behind them has produced something that looks finished and is not fastened the way it should be. Ask how the gutters will be handled before the job starts, and if they are old enough to be brittle, decide in advance whether they are coming back or being replaced, because that decision is much cheaper made in the bid than on the second morning.

Drip edge and gutter apron are related but not identical. Gutter apron has a longer, angled leg designed to carry water over the back edge of the gutter, and it is a useful upgrade on homes where water has been getting behind the gutter and rotting the fascia. On a replacement, the roof edge and the gutter should be considered together, because reinstalling old gutters over new edge metal without checking the relationship between them is how a brand new roof still stains the fascia in its first spring.

Drip Edge Questions Parker, CO Homeowners Ask

• Is drip edge required on a Parker roof replacement? Yes. The Town of Parker's re-roofing requirements handout requires drip edge at all rakes and eaves, with a minimum of four inches by two inches at eaves and two inches by one inch or a D style profile at rakes.
• My roof has no drip edge. Is it illegal? No. Older roofs installed under earlier requirements are not retroactively unlawful. The requirement applies when the roof is replaced, and that is when the missing metal gets added.
• Can drip edge be added without replacing the roof? At the rakes it is sometimes possible. At the eaves it usually is not, because the metal belongs under the underlayment and the first course. Adding it properly is a replacement scope item, not a maintenance one.
• Do I need new gutters when I get new edge metal? Not always. What you need is for someone to check how the existing gutter sits relative to the new metal, because a mismatch there sends water behind the gutter and onto the fascia, which is the problem the metal was installed to prevent.

More Parker, CO Roofing Guides

• Shingle Nailing Requirements in Parker
• Why Parker Roof Leaks Start at the Pipe Boot
• Roof Repair in Parker, CO