What is a dry hip system?

1What is in the kit

A hip is the sloping line at an outward corner of the roof, running from the apex down to the eaves. The tiles that cap it are hip tiles. On a traditional roof they sit in mortar, with a metal hip iron at the foot to stop the lowest tile creeping down.

A dry hip system swaps that bed for a set of parts. A fixing rail or batten is screwed along the hip. The hip tiles are held to it by clips or screws, so each tile is secured individually. A flexible, often ventilated, strip closes the gap underneath, and the top and bottom are finished with a trim or cap suited to the system. Exact parts vary by manufacturer and tile profile.

With no wet mortar there is no bed to shrink, crack or drop out. The tiles are tied to the roof structure rather than to each other, and the hip stays tidy as long as the fixings are sound.

2How the systems are tested

BSI publishes BS 8612:2018, which sets out what a dry-fixed hip, ridge or verge system must achieve in testing. Marley calls it the test specification for dry systems at the verge, hip and ridge. When a supplier says a system is tested, this is the document behind the claim.

It sits alongside BS 5534, which since its 2014 revision has treated mortar as something that seals a ridge or hip, not something to rely on to hold it. A dry hip is one route to meeting that. A bedded hip with a mechanical fixing behind it is the other. Our pages on BS 5534 ridge fixing and mortar versus dry fix set the two side by side.

Passing a test in a laboratory does not fit the tiles for you. It needs a fixer who follows the maker's instructions and uses parts that belong together, not a mixture from different ranges.

3Fitting it: what happens on the roof

The old hip tiles come off first, and the mortar bed beneath is cleared. The timber of the hip rafter is checked, since the rail is screwed into it, and any damp or rot is dealt with before anything new is fixed. The rail is then set on the line of the hip, level and tight, and the hip tiles are laid on it from the eaves upwards.

Each tile takes its own clip or screw, so a gust that lifts one tile cannot pull the whole row. Cuts are made where the tiles meet the ridge, and the seal goes under the edges before the cap is fitted at the top. The work is neat and dry, so it does not depend on a good day for mortar to set, and the roof is left clean at the end. Afterwards the photographs of the finished hip go with the paperwork.

4What it costs per metre

Dry hip work is priced by length, because the metres of hip drive the job. MyBuilder's dry ridge guide, updated 21 August 2026, gives a typical UK range of £40 to £60 per linear metre for dry ridge. Checkatrade lists dry ridge at £50 to £70 per metre and dry hip at £70 to £100 per metre, excluding VAT.

Hips cost more than ridges because every hip needs its own end details, and the tiles often need cutting to the angle. Access adds to it as well: a hipped bungalow with four hips, a steep pitch or a roof that needs scaffold all push the total up. These are typical national ranges, not our price. Our written quote gives one total price, and it arrives once the survey and photographs of your hips are done.

If you are weighing several quotes, check that each states whether VAT and scaffold are in the figure.

5Roofs where it fits and where it does not

A dry hip suits hipped bungalows and semis on exposed ground, because the hips take wind from several sides and a mechanical fixing does not age like a mortar bed. It is also a good answer where the old bed keeps failing, since it removes the cause rather than patching the result.

It is not right for every roof. The kit has to match the tile profile, and some old or hand-made tiles do not sit properly on a rail. On slate the answer needs more thought, and our page on dry ridge on slate goes into it. On a protected building the council may want the traditional bedded look, and changing materials on a listed building can require listed building consent.

The same ideas apply at the roof edge, covered in dry verge on an old roof, and in gaps under the ridge tiles, which explains the ventilated opening a dry system leaves. The wider service is on the ridge tile repairs page.