What it is called, by market
One concept, four markets. Where a name means something else locally, the card says so rather than leaving you to find out on site.
United Kingdom
Close, not identicalflashing
also soakers, cover flashing, apron, back gutter, stepped flashing
A slated or plain-tiled abutment uses SOAKERS, one per course under the tiles, with a separate cover flashing over them. The cover flashing alone is not a detail.
Australia
Close, not identicalflashing
also apron flashing, barge flashing, storm mould, over-flashing
Sheet-roof dominated, so most flashings are one-piece pressed profiles fixed over the sheeting rather than the interleaved soaker-and-cover pair.
United Statesyours
Close, not identicalflashing
also step flashing, counter flashing, base flashing, kickout flashing
Step flashing is an L-shaped piece woven into each shingle course — the closest equivalent of a soaker — with counter flashing let into the wall above it. Kickout flashing at the bottom of a run has no standard British name.
Canada
Close, not identicalflashing
also step flashing, counter flashing, drip edge
As the United States, with drip edge at eaves and rakes a separately specified component that British practice usually details in the tile or the fascia instead.
The governing standard, by market
United Kingdom
BS EN 12588 / Lead Sheet Association guidance
Rolled lead sheet, its codes and thicknesses, and the maximum piece sizes that limit thermal movement.
United States
IRC R903.2 / SMACNA Architectural Sheet Metal Manual
Where flashing is required at roof and wall intersections, and the detailing of sheet-metal work.
Calculators for this
Each works in either measurement system, and the terminology on the page follows whichever market you have selected.
Frequently asked questions
- Is step flashing the same thing as a soaker?
- They do the same job at the same junction, and the geometry differs enough that one cannot be substituted for the other. A SOAKER is a flat piece folded up the wall and out under one course of slates or plain tiles, invisible once laid, with a separate cover flashing over the top lapping down the wall. STEP FLASHING is an L-shaped piece woven into each shingle course so that its upstand is exposed against the wall in a staircase pattern, with counter flashing let into a chase above it. The systems are two-part in both cases, but the parts sit differently: a British cover flashing steps down over soakers it does not touch, while an American counter flashing overlaps the step flashing directly. Reading one market's detail drawing and ordering the other market's components leaves a junction that looks right and is not.
- Why is lead specified in codes rather than thicknesses?
- Because the code number is the traditional designation and it travels with a colour, which is how it is identified on site. British rolled lead runs from Code 3 to Code 8, each a specific thickness and weight, and each is colour-marked on the roll — so a roofer asks for Code 4 rather than for 1.80 mm. The code is not a free choice: it is selected by application and by the length of the piece, because lead expands and contracts substantially with temperature, and a piece too long for its thickness fatigues and splits at the fixing. That is why a specification gives both a code and a maximum piece length, and why a long abutment is made from several overlapping pieces rather than one continuous run — a detail that looks like extra joints and is actually what stops the lead tearing itself apart.
- What is kickout flashing and why does it have no British name?
- It is the piece at the BOTTOM of a step-flashed run that throws water out into the gutter instead of letting it run down behind the cladding, and its absence is one of the most common and most expensive defects in North American construction — it rots the wall below quietly for years. British practice tends not to name it because the equivalent condition is usually handled differently: the abutment commonly meets a gutter or a lower roof rather than continuing past the eaves line, and where it does continue the cover flashing is dressed to discharge outward as a matter of course. The absence of a word is not the absence of the problem, though. Where a British roof does present that geometry, the same water goes to the same place, and nobody has a standard component to order for it.