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.
Woodlawn is small houses on narrow lots in the blocks between Van Cortlandt Park and the cemetery, frame and brick, semi attached and detached, most of them from the 1900s through the 1930s. They are modest houses with steep roofs, and almost every one of them has had the attic turned into living space at some point in the last eighty years.
That conversion is where the skylight work is. When an attic became a bedroom, the usual way to get head height and light was a dormer, and Woodlawn is full of them, shed dormers across the back and gable dormers at the front. A dormer brings its own roof with it, and that little roof is the single most common place we find trouble on these houses.
A dormer roof is short and much shallower than the main slope, sometimes nearly flat, and a short shallow run is the hardest place on a roof to flash properly. There is not much distance for water to get away in, the junction where the dormer meets the main slope collects everything coming down from above, and a skylight set into that small area has very little room on any side of it. Units go in there anyway, and plenty of them were put in by someone who treated it like a normal slope.
The right unit for a dormer roof depends on how shallow it actually is. Where there is real pitch, a deck mounted unit with a step flashing kit woven into the courses is correct. Where the dormer roof is close to flat, it needs to be treated as a low slope roof, which means a curb built proud of the surface so the flashing is never sitting in standing water. Getting that one decision wrong is why a dormer skylight leaks in its second year.
On the main slope the numbers are the ordinary ones. A straight replacement on a sound curb is $2,287 installed, with the $1,760 standard replacement labor already inside it. A roof window in a pitched slope is $1,004 installed, it opens for air, and in the right size it satisfies egress out of a finished attic room, which on a converted top floor is worth asking about. A new opening cut, framed, flashed and finished inside is $3,850. A manual venting unit on a pitched roof is $1,295.
Leaking skylight in Woodlawn? 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.
Because a dormer roof is short and shallow, which is the hardest place on a house to flash. Water coming down the main slope all arrives at the junction where the dormer meets it, there is very little run for it to get away in, and a skylight in that small area has almost no margin on any side. A unit flashed there as though it were a normal slope will leak, usually within a couple of years.
It can help and it is not the whole answer. A roof window of the right size in the slope can satisfy egress out of a finished room, which is one of the things that gets asked about a converted attic. Ceiling height and the stair are separate questions and they are not ours to rule on. We will tell you what the unit does and does not do rather than imply it settles everything.
A roof window sits in a pitched slope at an angle you can see out of and it opens, hinged so you can clean the outside from inside the room. It is $1,004 installed with the flashing kit. A flat skylight on a low slope roof gives light but no view and, unless it is a venting model, no air. On a converted attic the roof window is usually the better of the two.
Yes, and it is the decision that matters most. A nearly flat dormer roof has to be treated as a low slope roof, which means the unit sits on a curb built proud of the surface so the flashing is never in standing water. Flashing it like a pitched slope, which is what usually happened the first time, is the reason it is leaking now.
For a straight replacement in the same opening, usually only briefly, and most of the day is spent on the roof. Where the opening is being cut new, or where the inside of the shaft has water damage that needs making good, there is proper interior work and we tell you how many days that is before we start.
No. There is no Bronx premium and no Woodlawn premium. The published prices hold, the roof and the access decide the rest of it, and somebody comes out and looks at no charge.
Kingsbridge · Riverdale · Morris Park · Pelham Bay
We cover every part of the borough. See skylights in the Bronx, our published prices, or NYC permits and landmark rules. Serving 10470.