Recent skylight work
New York Skylight Installers replaces, installs and supplies skylights in Staten Island houses, cottages and additions. Official VELUX dealer, LIC# 2084179, skylights only since 2005.
West Brighton is one of the older parts of the north shore, frame and brick houses running back off Castleton Avenue and Forest Avenue, a good deal of it from the 1890s through the 1930s with postwar infill between. Plenty of these houses have been divided into two or three units over the years, and most of them have had more than one roof put on. Both of those facts show up when an old skylight finally comes off.
The part of this job nobody can see from the ground is the decking. A skylight that has been quietly weeping for a few years does not only stain a ceiling. It wets the plank or plywood deck around the opening and the top of the curb itself, and on a house of this age that framing is often old lumber with nothing under the roofing to slow water down. Everything looks fine until the old unit is lifted off and the wood is soft to a screwdriver.
We handle that by telling you before we start. The published price assumes a curb that is still sound: $2,287 installed for a replacement, with the $1,760 standard replacement labor already inside it. If the curb or the deck around it has gone, it gets rebuilt before a new unit goes on, because setting a new skylight on rotten wood wastes the unit. What we will not do is put a figure on that repair before anyone has seen it. We open it up, we show you what is there, and we price the rebuild then.
The second thing we check on these roofs is how many roofs there are. A lot of West Brighton houses carry two or three layers, each one taken a little further up the side of the curb, until the curb is half buried and the original flashing is somewhere underneath. That changes the height the new unit needs to sit at, and it is worth knowing before the order goes in rather than on the day the crew arrives.
On a house cut into apartments the skylight is usually over the common stair, which is the only daylight in the middle of the building and the hardest place to reach. If nobody can get a pole up there, the solar venting unit at $2,100 does the work on a remote, closes itself when the rain sensor gets wet, and needs no electrician and no wire run up the shaft. A roof window for a finished attic room starts at $1,004 with its flashing kit.
Leaking skylight in West Brighton? 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 on Staten Island.
We stop, show you, and price the rebuild before we carry on. The published $2,287 replacement assumes a sound curb, and on houses of this age it is common enough that we raise it at the assessment rather than spring it on you. A rebuilt curb and any soft decking replaced costs what it costs, and we would rather do that than set a new unit on wood that will not hold it.
Because there is no honest way to do it. Until the old unit is off, nobody can say whether it is the top inch of one side or the deck for a foot out all the way round. Any number given before that is a guess, and a guess on this part of the job is either padding that you pay for or a shortfall somebody argues about later.
It does. Each layer tends to run a little further up the side of the curb, so the curb ends up shorter in relation to the roof surface than it started and the original flashing can be buried underneath. That changes what the new unit has to sit on and how it is flashed in. It is one of the things we check on the first visit so it is settled before anything is ordered.
The building owner, because the stair is common space rather than part of any one apartment. The part that needs organising is roof access. If the only way up runs through a tenant's unit, that tenant needs telling in advance and the date has to suit them. We sort that out at the assessment.
A solar venting unit, $2,100 installed. A small panel in the frame charges a battery, it opens and closes on a remote, and a rain sensor shuts it by itself. There is no electrician and no wiring run up a three storey shaft, which is usually the expensive half of a wired unit.
It depends entirely on the address, and on this side of the island it genuinely changes from one run of blocks to the next. We check your address against the designated districts before anything is ordered rather than assuming either way, and what that means in practice is on our NYC permits and landmark rules page.
St. George · Stapleton · Dongan Hills · Todt Hill
We cover every part of the borough. See skylights on Staten Island, our published prices, or NYC permits and landmark rules. Serving 10310.