Edge Railings
The edge railings are based on "L" shaped aluminium extrusions. They are used on the perimeter of the installation to contain it, provide a nice edging, and prevent the growing medium from sloughing away or resting directly in the structural elements of the home ; walls, parapets.
The material we used is the Xeroflor XF510 "XeroEdge" product. There are likely others in the market place. The slots at the base of the vertical plane are for drainage. It is available in a range of heights : we used the 4", 7" and 9" varieties within our installation. This material comes any length you want, so long as it is 10 feet. However, if you are careful there will be very little wastage or scrap left over.
It comes with neat little U-shaped joiners that slide up underneath the top lip of the channel and are simply and quickly attached with PK or self tapping screws (supplied in abundance). The trick is the make sure that your joins are always in the middle of long runs, and never in the corners. In practice I ended up attaching the joiners to the vertical face first and then put the vertical screws in the top second. Whole lot easier to hold / faster to complete.
A word to the cautious: be careful to vacuum up all your aluminium shards created by the self-tapping screws lest that puncture your root barrier, protective layer and roof membrane.
Our main roof installation was a bit complicated by the highly irregular shape of the solar panels plus the walking pads. There are a (large) number of short elements plus some longer runs.
First you measure, being careful to identify the "inside" corners where a V of material will need to be removed, and the "outside" corners where a simple cut suffices. In fact, measuring twice helps. I worked to 1/4" units and was not caught out too badly. Here are a couple of typical sketches used.
The "inside " corners take more work as you need to remove a 90 degree V shape (100 deg is better) form all the horizontal planes before you cab bend it. Although this material can be easily cut with "tin snips" you will need both left handed and right handed ones to most easily / quickly / neatly deal with both sides of some of the cutting.
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| Edge Railing |
The material we used is the Xeroflor XF510 "XeroEdge" product. There are likely others in the market place. The slots at the base of the vertical plane are for drainage. It is available in a range of heights : we used the 4", 7" and 9" varieties within our installation. This material comes any length you want, so long as it is 10 feet. However, if you are careful there will be very little wastage or scrap left over.
It comes with neat little U-shaped joiners that slide up underneath the top lip of the channel and are simply and quickly attached with PK or self tapping screws (supplied in abundance). The trick is the make sure that your joins are always in the middle of long runs, and never in the corners. In practice I ended up attaching the joiners to the vertical face first and then put the vertical screws in the top second. Whole lot easier to hold / faster to complete.
A word to the cautious: be careful to vacuum up all your aluminium shards created by the self-tapping screws lest that puncture your root barrier, protective layer and roof membrane.
Our main roof installation was a bit complicated by the highly irregular shape of the solar panels plus the walking pads. There are a (large) number of short elements plus some longer runs.
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| I tried (initially) working with one large DWG. That didn't work out at all. I ended up (re)measuring / cutting / installing each edging section in succession : 10 feet at a time. |
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| Working DWG |
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| Another Working DWG |
The "outside" corners are straight forward in the you just cut through the horizontal plane and then bend the vertical plane around the Z axis. I used a 40 tooth "aluminium" blade in my 7" size circular saw to do all the cutting. Then hand filed all the sharp / arris edges smooth. Then bent it by hand.
The "inside " corners take more work as you need to remove a 90 degree V shape (100 deg is better) form all the horizontal planes before you cab bend it. Although this material can be easily cut with "tin snips" you will need both left handed and right handed ones to most easily / quickly / neatly deal with both sides of some of the cutting.
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| An "inside" corner marked for cutting the V out of the horizontal plane |
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A very typical section showing, an "outside" corner, then an "inside" corner, then another "outside" corner. bent, ready for installation  Another example of one section. all bent into shape ready for installation |
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| Yet another example of one 10 foot long section, all bent into shape ready for installation.
We used over 30 sections of railing.in our installation. Only two of them were used "straight". None of the others were the same, or even slightly resembled another.
The fabrication of the edge railings was very tome consuming. With all the measuring in the roof, then marking in the garage, then remeasuring on the roof, then cutting, snipping and filing in the garage took an inordinate amount of time. About an hour per length, at least, and two hours for the complex ones.
Here is a selection of photos of the actual installations. The black layer is the root barrier.
    At a couple of places, the living roof is installed underneath the cantilevered solar panels.  The vents from the house sewers received their own edges.   
This shows the roof of the 3rd storey walkout. The edge railing is 9" high and shows shaping around the drainage outlet on the LHS to accommodate rock salt for winter melting. Half a bag of rock salt in the early winter will keep the drainage way open through all sorts of snow and ice.
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