A stain spreading on the hallway ceiling under the sun tunnel, a bedroom skylight that only drips in a wind driven rain, or a pair of fogged units over the kitchen that somebody caulked three times. No skylight specialist is based on Staten Island, so repairs here get carried by roofers as a sideline. Skylights are the only thing we do, and we have been doing them since 2005. The assessment is free and an active leak goes to the front of the schedule.
Work out what is failing before you call anyone. Our leak diagnostic asks six questions about where the water shows and what the glass looks like, then names the likely cause and the four photos that get it priced properly.
If water is coming in today, call (718) 646-7053 and say it is leaking now. The phone is answered evenings and weekends, and an active leak is flagged the same day rather than put in the ordinary queue.
Four photos get most Island repairs priced without a second trip: the ceiling or wall where the water shows, the skylight from inside with the shaft in frame, the unit from the roof with a few feet of shingle around it, and a close shot of the data plate on the inside of the frame. Send photos instead if nothing is dripping at this moment.
We do not charge to come and look, and we do not send a salesman. The person who looks at it is the person who tells you what failed.
Staten Island is pitched roof country. Colonials, ranches, split levels and semi attached houses with shingle roofs, which means the overwhelming majority of units here are deck mounted. A deck mounted skylight is only as good as the step flashing kit that goes around it, and that kit is a real line item with a real cost, which makes it an easy thing to quietly leave off a bid to come in cheaper.
When a deck mounted unit on a shingle roof leaks and the glass is intact and the seals are fine, the flashing is where we look first. Shingles lapped over the top of the frame with a bead of sealant instead of a head flashing, or no kick out where the roof meets a dormer wall, will hold for a season or two and then start again every time the wind drives the rain sideways.
The fix is not more sealant. It is pulling the courses back, installing the correct flashing system for that unit and that roof pitch, and reinstating the shingles over it in the right order. On a unit that is already past its service life, the honest answer is a new unit with the flashing kit in the number, and we will say so rather than charge you to reflash something that is going to fog next winter.
A great deal of roof work happened on the South and East Shores between 2013 and 2015. Midland Beach, New Dorp Beach, Oakwood Beach, Tottenville, Great Kills and the streets behind Father Capodanno Boulevard were rebuilt in a hurry, often with raised houses, new rear additions and new dormers, and often by crews working through a long list.
Builder grade deck mounted units went into a lot of those roofs. They are now twelve and thirteen years into a service life that was never twenty five, so this is the window where the seals go and the flashing details that were rushed start to show. If your house was raised or re roofed after the storm and the skylights went in at the same time, they are all the same age and they tend to fail within a year or two of each other.
That matters for how you spend the money. Replacing them in one visit is meaningfully cheaper per unit than three separate trips, because the mobilization, the roof protection and the interior protection are shared across the whole job. Tell us how many there are and we will price it as one job.
Houses within a few blocks of the water on the East Shore, the South Shore and along the Kill Van Kull take salt air year round. On a skylight that shows up in two places: the aluminum cladding over the frame, which chalks and then pits, and the fasteners, which bleed rust streaks down the shingles long before anything leaks.
Corroded cladding is not cosmetic. Once the cap flashing has thinned at a corner, water gets behind it and into the frame, and on a wood frame unit that is how a frame rots from the inside while the glass still looks perfect. Rust staining around the perimeter of a shoreline skylight is worth a look even with no drip inside.
This is also why we do not recommend aluminium repairs on a badly corroded unit near the water. Patching one corner of a cap flashing that is twenty years into salt exposure buys a year. We would rather tell you that than sell it to you.
A lot of Island houses have a sun tunnel over an interior hallway, a bathroom or a stairwell, because there is no other way to get daylight into the middle of a ranch. When one of those goes wrong the symptom is almost never a drip at the roof. It is a ring on the ceiling diffuser, or water sitting inside the tube.
Three things cause it. The dome gasket at the roof has perished, so rain gets into the tube itself. The flashing at the roof is the ordinary deck mounted problem above. Or there is no leak at all and what you are seeing is condensation, because a flexible uninsulated tube running through a cold attic is a condensing surface and warm bathroom air finds it.
Those three have three different fixes and only one of them involves the roof, so the diagnosis matters more here than almost anywhere else on the house. We open the diffuser, look up the tube and tell you which one it is.
St. George, Stapleton, Tompkinsville, New Brighton and Port Richmond are older and taller than the rest of the borough. Frame houses, some of them Victorian, with a skylight over the main stair, a light shaft down the middle, and occasionally a wire glass unit over a back addition.
A stair skylight in a nineteenth century frame house is usually sitting on a site built curb that has been reroofed around several times. The curb is the thing to look at, not the glass. If the curb top has gone soft, a new unit fastened to it will leak at the fasteners no matter how good the unit is, so the curb gets rebuilt first and the price reflects that.
St. George and Hamilton Park are historic districts. Work that changes what is visible from the street is a different conversation from a like for like swap on a rear slope, and we will tell you which one you are in before anything is ordered. Our page on NYC skylight permits covers how that is handled.
This is the one borough where the job is not fighting the building. There is usually a driveway to park in and set a ladder, a two story roof rather than a six story one, no super to coordinate with, no managing agent, no alteration agreement, and no sidewalk shed permit to pull before anyone can start.
What that means in practice is that a straightforward Island repair can often be looked at and fixed inside the same week, where the same work on a Manhattan brownstone has a roof access conversation in front of it. It also keeps the cost down, because none of the access overhead that applies across the bridge applies here.
The one thing that does slow an Island job is a shared roof on a semi attached house. If the skylight sits near the party line, we want to know who owns what before we open anything up.
A replacement on a curb or roof opening that is still sound starts at $2,079 installed, and the standard replacement labor inside that figure is $1,600. Cutting a brand new opening starts at $3,500. Those are starting points from our published pricing, not quotes, because the roof decides the rest.
What we will not do is put a number on a repair before somebody has looked at the curb. A rotted curb, a frame that has to be rebuilt, or a leak that turns out to be the roof rather than the skylight all change the job, and a figure invented over the phone is not worth having. The written quote after the visit is the one that governs.
If it turns out the skylight is not the cause, we will tell you that and we will not charge you for the visit. That happens more often than you would think, because water gets in at one place and shows up at another.
New York Skylight Installers, (718) 646-7053. Skylight specialists since 2005, licensed and insured, and skylights are the only thing we do. No skylight specialist is based on the Island, so repairs here are usually carried by roofers as a sideline. We bring the specialist version across the bridge routinely, for one unit or for a whole roof, and the assessment is free either way.
That pattern almost always means flashing rather than glass or seals. Water driven at the side of the unit gets under a shingle course that was lapped over the frame, or past a dormer wall where no kick out flashing was fitted. A unit that leaks in every rain is usually a seal or a glass problem. A unit that only leaks in wind driven rain is usually a flashing problem, and a bead of sealant will not hold it.
They are worth looking at. Builder grade deck mounted units from the 2013 to 2015 rebuild are now twelve or thirteen years old, which is the window where the seals start to go. They also tend to be the same age and the same model across the whole roof, so they fail at roughly the same time. Replacing several in one visit costs meaningfully less per unit than three separate trips.
Yes, on a shoreline house it does. Rust streaking means the fasteners or the aluminium cap flashing are corroding, which happens fast within a few blocks of the water. Once a cap flashing has thinned at a corner, water gets behind it and into the frame, and a wood frame can rot from the inside while the glass still looks fine. It is worth a look before it becomes an interior problem.
Not necessarily. Three different things cause that. The dome gasket on the roof can perish and let rain into the tube. The flashing at the roof can be the ordinary deck mounted failure. Or there is no leak at all and it is condensation, because an uninsulated tube running through a cold attic is a condensing surface for warm bathroom or kitchen air. All three look identical from the hallway, so we open the diffuser and look up the tube.
Often the unit is not the question, the curb under it is. A stair skylight in a nineteenth century frame house is usually sitting on a site built curb that has been reroofed around several times, and if the curb top has gone soft then any new unit fastened to it will leak at the fasteners. We look at the curb first. If it needs rebuilding, that is in the quote rather than discovered on the day.
A like for like replacement on an existing opening is usually treated as ordinary repair work. Cutting a new opening, changing the size, or work that changes the street facing appearance of a house in the St. George or Hamilton Park historic districts is a different matter and we will tell you which one you are in before anything is ordered. Our page on NYC skylight permits goes through it.