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.
Morris Park is one and two family brick and frame houses on small lots, detached and semi detached, mostly 1920s through the 1950s, in the blocks around Morris Park Avenue and Williamsbridge Road. The houses are well kept, often by the same family for a long time, and that is exactly why the roofs here come with a particular history on them.
A roof that has been looked after for forty years by whoever was available has usually been coated. Roof cement one year, aluminum coating a few years after that, then a bucket of something silver again when a stain showed up inside. Each layer went on over the last one, and around a skylight each layer went a little further up the curb and a little further over the flashing. By the time we get there the flashing is not visible, the curb is not visible, and nobody can say what is actually underneath.
That matters because you cannot diagnose a leak you cannot see. The first job on a roof like this is often to cut back the coating around the opening and find out what is under it. Sometimes the metal flashing is intact and has simply been buried, sometimes there is no flashing at all and the coating has been the only thing holding water out for years. We would rather tell you which of those we found than quote around it.
If the curb is sound once it is uncovered, a straight replacement is $2,287 installed, and the $1,760 standard replacement labor sits inside that figure. If the curb is rotten, and on a roof that has been coated over for decades it quite often is, the curb gets rebuilt first, because setting a new unit on a bad curb is money spent twice and we will say so rather than take the easier job.
The other common Morris Park job is light into the middle of the house. These are deep houses on narrow lots with windows only at the front and the back, so the middle rooms and the stair get nothing. Cutting a new opening, framed, flashed and finished on the inside, is $3,850. On a pitched slope a roof window at $1,004 installed will do more work than a flat unit, because it sits where you can see out of it and it opens for air.
Leaking skylight in Morris Park? 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.
Yes, but it usually means cutting the coating back around the opening first so the curb and the flashing are visible again. Under that much coating nobody can tell by looking whether the flashing is intact, damaged or missing. We open it up, we tell you what is actually under there, and the price follows what we find rather than what we guessed.
Because coating is not flashing. Flashing works by lapping metal so water runs over the joint, and it keeps working as the roof moves. A coating is a film sitting on top, it is only as good as the surface under it, and it cracks at exactly the point where the roof and the curb move against each other. A second coat over a failed one fails in the same place.
Weight and sound tell you most of it once the coating is off. A sound curb is solid under a hand and a knife will not sink into it. Rot shows as soft wood at the corners first, usually on the low side where water sat. If the curb is gone it gets rebuilt before a new unit goes on, because a new skylight on a rotten curb will leak again and you will have paid twice.
That is the case where it is most worth it. A narrow deep house gets daylight only at the two ends, so the middle is lit by electricity all day. A new opening, framed, flashed and finished inside, is $3,850. On a pitched slope a roof window at $1,004 does more than a flat unit, because you can see out of it and it opens.
Almost certainly not, but it is worth checking rather than assuming. Designated districts in the Bronx cover particular blocks and the residential streets we normally work on in this neighborhood sit outside them. An individually designated building is its own case. We confirm the address before anything is ordered, and the permits page sets out what applies.
Somebody comes out, gets on the roof, looks at the curb, the flashing and the condition of the roof around the opening, and looks at the ceiling inside where the stain is. You get a written number for the work that is actually needed. We do not quote a skylight over the phone, because on a roof with this much history on it a phone number would be a guess.
Pelham Bay · Country Club · Throgs Neck · Woodlawn
We cover every part of the borough. See skylights in the Bronx, our published prices, or NYC permits and landmark rules. Serving 10461 and 10462.