Recent skylight work
New York Skylight Installers replaces, installs and supplies skylights in Bronx houses, rowhouses and apartment buildings. Official VELUX dealer, LIC# 2084179, skylights only since 2005.
Country Club is the most suburban corner of the Bronx, detached single family houses on wider lots out on the peninsula between Eastchester Bay and Pelham Bay Park. The houses are a mix, some original, a great many rebuilt, extended or substantially redone over the past thirty years, and the newer work is where the interesting skylight problems are.
The common thread in the rebuilt houses is the rear addition with a vaulted or cathedral ceiling, usually a family room or a kitchen extension, with one or more skylights up in the slope. When that ceiling follows the roof line there is no shaft to speak of and the job is simple. When the ceiling is flat and the skylight is in the roof above it, there is a light shaft running between the two, and a deep shaft is its own piece of work.
A deep shaft is where condensation gets mistaken for a leak. Warm moist air from a kitchen or a bathroom rises into the shaft, meets cold glass at the top, and runs back down the shaft walls, so the stain appears at the bottom corners and it appears in cold weather rather than in rain. That is not a flashing failure and sealing the outside will not touch it. The answers are a venting unit so the moist air has somewhere to go, insulation in the shaft walls, and in some cases nothing more than running the extractor fan longer.
Where the shaft is sound, the numbers are the standard ones. A straight replacement on a curb that is still good is $2,287 installed, the $1,760 standard replacement labor already inside that. A manual venting unit on a flat roof is $1,092 and on a pitched roof $1,295. The solar venting unit at $2,100 is the sensible one over a vaulted room nobody can reach with a pole, because it opens on a remote and the rain sensor closes it without anybody being home.
One more thing worth saying plainly about these houses. Several of them have a bank of units rather than one, two or three in a row down a vaulted slope, and we show the multiple unit credit on the face of the proposal where it applies. That credit exists because the crew, the setup and the roof work are shared across the units in one visit, so if the units end up split across separate visits the credit comes off, and we would rather say that at the start than argue about it later.
Leaking skylight in Country Club? Start with a professional assessment from New York's original skylight specialists. Skylights are all we have done since 2005: licensed and insured (LIC# 2084179), VELUX Trained & Approved, an official VELUX dealer, 4.9 stars on Google, and a 10-Year No Leak Warranty on every unit we install. Roofers and handymen do skylights on the side; we are the specialists the roofers call. Water dripping from the skylight, a stain on the ceiling under it, a drip that only shows up in a heavy rain: none of that tells you what actually failed. We come out, find the real cause, and give you a straight answer and a price for the right fix, which is usually a new unit. Active leaks go to the front of the schedule. Read more about skylight repair in the Bronx.
Most likely not. A stain that shows in cold weather and not in rain is condensation rather than a leak. Warm moist air rises up the light shaft, meets cold glass at the top and runs back down the shaft walls, so it lands at the bottom corners. Sealing the outside does nothing for it. A venting unit, insulation in the shaft walls and a longer run on the extractor fan are what actually fix it.
Yes, and it shows on the face of the proposal rather than being mentioned and forgotten. The credit is there because the setup, the crew and the roof work around the opening are shared across the units in a single visit. If the units are split into separate visits that saving disappears, so the credit comes off, and we say that up front rather than afterwards.
There is no fixed number, it depends on how wide the shaft is relative to its depth and how the walls are finished. A narrow deep shaft loses a lot of light and splays the walls outward at the bottom helps considerably. Painting the shaft flat white costs very little and does more than most people expect. We will tell you honestly if we think a particular shaft will disappoint you.
A solar venting unit, $2,100 installed. The panel sits in the frame, it charges a small battery, it opens and closes on a remote and a rain sensor shuts it when it gets wet. No electrician, no wiring run, and nobody standing on furniture with a pole. On a vaulted room that is normally the right answer rather than a manual unit.
Quite possibly. Sealed glass units have a service life and twenty years is within the window where edge seals start to fail, which shows as fog between the panes that no cleaning will touch. The flashing around it is a separate question and is often what fails first. We look at both and tell you which one is actually the problem rather than replacing everything.
Replacing an existing unit in the same opening is normally maintenance and does not need a Buildings permit. Cutting a new opening does, because it is structural work on the roof, and a new opening framed, flashed and finished runs $3,850. Our NYC permits and landmark rules page sets out what applies and what our licence covers.
Throgs Neck · Pelham Bay · Morris Park · Woodlawn
We cover every part of the borough. See skylights in the Bronx, our published prices, or NYC permits and landmark rules. Serving 10465.