Material does not arrive on a truck at the house. It is hoisted, carried through a building, or craned, and a dumpster on the street usually needs a permit with its own lead time. On a townhouse with no driveway and a rear yard reached through the parlour floor, the logistics are most of the schedule.
Buildings run on rules. Co ops and condos restrict exterior work to weekday hours, require a certificate of insurance naming the building and the managing agent before anyone sets foot inside, and control the service elevator by appointment. We handle all of that as part of the job rather than handing you a list of things to arrange, because the certificate is the item that most often delays a Manhattan start.
Large parts of the island sit inside Landmarks Preservation Commission historic districts, from Greenwich Village and SoHo to Tribeca and the Upper East Side Historic District. Anything visible from a public street needs approval before a permit issues. Roof work on a flat roof behind a parapet is frequently outside that review, and we check the address against the district map at the quoting stage rather than discovering it later.
What we actually work on here is mostly flat: townhouse main roofs and setbacks, co op roofs with mechanical equipment, bulkheads, light courts and the parapets around all of them. Buildings over six stories also carry a recurring facade inspection cycle, and the conditions that report lists frequently include roof to wall and parapet work.
More water enters here than anywhere else on a Manhattan building, and it appears on a ceiling well below the roof.
The junction where a bulkhead meets the roof plane is a flashing detail that gets skipped on cheap jobs.
Every AC unit, fan and duct penetration is a hole in the roof with its own flashing that ages at its own rate.
Blocked or undersized drainage causes ponding, and an inch of standing water across a thousand square feet is over five tons.
Occupied terraces over living space are the least forgiving roofs in the city, and the ones most often built with the waterproofing treated as an afterthought.
Upper East Side, Upper West Side, Harlem, Washington Heights
Access, almost entirely. Material is hoisted or hand carried rather than driven to the house, a street dumpster usually needs a permit, work hours are restricted by the building, and the service elevator is booked rather than used. The membrane on the roof costs the same as it does in Queens. Getting it there and getting the old one out is what moves the number.
Yes, and most of our Manhattan work involves one. We issue a certificate of insurance naming the building entity and the managing agent before anyone arrives, work the hours the building allows, and schedule elevator and roof access in advance. We are licensed under NYC DCWP Home Improvement Contractor license #2130570 and fully insured.
Only if the work is visible from a public street. A flat roof behind a parapet usually is not, which is why most Manhattan roof replacements proceed without Landmarks review even inside a historic district. Anything that changes a visible roofline, a cornice or a street facing dormer does need approval. We check your address against the district map before quoting.
Yes, and it is a large part of what we do here. We read the actual condition list rather than the summary, price each item as written, and coordinate with your engineer so the repair is documented the way the reinspection needs it. The expensive mistake is doing the work and discovering afterwards that nobody documented it for the amended filing.
Sometimes, and we will tell you honestly which situation you are in. If the waterproofing membrane under the pavers is sound and the failure is at a drain, a planter or the door threshold, that can be addressed locally. If the membrane itself has failed, the surface has to come up, because patching from above a failed membrane is how a terrace gets fixed twice.
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