I have a house with vinyl siding and aluminum trim/sheathing, where the gable roof at either end has no soffit at all.
I'm trying to come up with a way to hang addressable LED light strings very straight, which is pretty easy where I have a soffit or gutters to hang from, but this end of the house has neither. I'm strongly considering "permanently installing" with vinyl J-channel under the soffit, but I don't think that will work on these ends.
Would I cause damage by shoving the long side of a J channel between the shingles and the roof edge, and fastening the curled end against the trim, like in this diagram?
I considered using LED strips instead of strands/strings, but I don't like the look as well and I'd have to run a diffuser channel for them also.
Short of using a shingle clip for each light (75mm spacing on the wires) how can I run lights up and down these peaks?
Best Answer
After trying a few different configurations, I've decided in the interest of keeping things straight and simple, if I mount the long side of the vinyl J channel against the trim edge and drill holes through the short edge, I'll have enough space for LEDs and power injection wires and a good straight line of LEDs through each piece of J channel, and I won't have to disturb the shingles.
Added benefit: J channel comes in 12.5ft pieces and the strands of 50 ARGB LEDs are just over 12 ft so I can take the lights down easily after Christmas if I use a velcro or semi-permanent adhesive to mount them, or leave them up (semi-permanent installation) and mount them with a permanent adhesive or nails/screws through the trim.
To anyone else considering installing any kind of lights on an edge like this, you can either mount each light on a shingle clip (select lights with wide spacing so you don't need hundreds of clips) or mount the lights on something straight (pvc, vinyl/aluminum channel) and mount that to the house so you don't need to secure as many points.