These are the questions Canarsie owners, tenants and shopkeepers ask us most, grouped by the kind of property. Each answer comes from the sources named at the top of this page and from how we install.
Houses with more than one household
Our attached house has a garage and a slab under the front, with no cellar. How does the cable get from the front door to the apartment upstairs?
It goes up rather than down. On an attached house without a cellar under the front, we look for a path from the door frame into the floor or wall of the upper level: a hall closet just inside the door, a utility chase beside the stair, or the space behind a baseboard or trim. On houses with siding, a short run behind the exterior trim to a point where it can enter the wall cleanly is often the neatest answer. The route is the biggest single variable in the price on these houses, so we find it before we quote.
The ground-floor household's station at grade is usually the easy part, because the cable can come straight through the ceiling of the lower level. Both stations are wired to one power supply placed off the lower floor, so the house has one system, one admin login and nothing important sitting where water has reached before.
The upstairs tenant's door is down the side alley at the back corner of the house. Should their button be at the alley entrance or on their own door?
It depends on whether the alley is open or gated. If a visitor can walk straight down the alley from the sidewalk, put the station at the tenant's own door, lit and labeled, and add a small sign or a labeled button at the front steps that points visitors to the side. That keeps the cable short and the price low.
If the alley has a locked gate at the front, the station is better at the gate. Visitors stay at the street, the tenant sees and talks to them from upstairs, and a release opens the gate while the tenant's door stays on a key. A gate station means cable along the fence or under the walk and an electric lock or strike suited to a gate, so it costs more than a wall station; we price both options and let the owner choose.
Can the stations on our two floors also call each other, so my mother upstairs can reach us without a phone?
Yes, on most wired multi-station systems. Besides answering the door, indoor stations can usually call one another, so a parent upstairs presses a button and the station in the downstairs kitchen rings. It is one of the most requested features in Canarsie houses where an older parent lives on one floor and the family on another, because it works without a phone in hand and without anyone shouting down the stairs.
Not every doorbell product does this. A consumer video doorbell answered on phones has no station-to-station calling, and some door station systems only allow calls between the door and each station. If calling between floors matters to you, say so when you send photos and we choose equipment that supports it.
My father uses a walker and cannot get to the door quickly. Can he answer and open it from his chair?
Yes. The simplest way is an indoor station mounted within reach of where he sits, with the release button on it, so he can see the visitor, talk and open without getting up. If he moves between rooms, a system with a handheld or tabletop answering unit, or phone answering on a device he already uses, lets the answering travel with him.
Two details make it work in practice. The door has to close and latch on its own after he releases it, because he will not be getting up to check, so we set the closer before anything else. And the release time has to be long enough for a slow visitor or an aide carrying bags to reach the door, which is adjustable on most of the equipment we install.
Nobody knows where the old buzzer wires in our house go. How do you trace them without opening walls?
With a tone generator and a probe, and a little patience. We put a signal on each conductor at the door end and follow it with a probe at the transformer, the chime and any old station locations, which tells us which pair goes where and whether any of them are broken along the way. Continuity and resistance tests then tell us whether each pair is good enough to carry a new system.
Most old bell wiring in Canarsie houses runs a predictable path: from the button down into the cellar or across the lower-level ceiling, to a transformer near the electrical panel, and up to a chime in the hall. Splits added later, when a house became a two-family, are where the surprises are. If a pair has been cut or buried somewhere we cannot reach, we run new cable along a route we can see rather than guess.
Small buildings and co-ops
We just added a third legal apartment. Does our house now count as a multiple dwelling for buzzer purposes?
Under the Multiple Dwelling Law, a building with three or more families living independently is a multiple dwelling, so a legal three-family house is one. That does not, by itself, bring in the section 50-a intercom requirement, which applies to buildings with eight or more apartments. Landlord v. Tenant reports a 2003 DHCR ruling on a three-apartment building that found no legal requirement to provide a buzzer system there.
The practical change is in expectations and upkeep. A third household needs its own button at the door it uses and its own way to answer, and once a system is installed the owner should expect to keep it working. We plan the new household's station as part of one system with the other two, which keeps the price inside our audio or video range rather than starting a second system.
If a rent-stabilized building on Rockaway Parkway installs a new intercom, can the owner ask for a rent increase for it?
Possibly, but check the current rules first. Landlord v. Tenant reports a 1996 DHCR opinion letter saying an owner who installs a bell and buzzer system may apply for a major capital improvement increase. MCI rules have changed since then, and whether a particular installation qualifies is DHCR's decision, not ours.
What we can do is make sure the paperwork is complete: an itemized invoice that separates equipment and labor, cut sheets for every component, photos of the lobby panel, the release and sample apartment stations, and the date the system was finished and tested. Owners who are considering an application should tell us before the job, so nothing has to be reconstructed afterward.
Our postwar lobby door is aluminum and glass with a narrow frame. Can it take an electric release?
Usually, but not with an ordinary strike. Narrow-stile aluminum doors of the kind fitted to many 1950s and 1960s lobbies have very little metal around the lock, so the release is either a strike made for narrow aluminum frames or an electrified version of the door's own lock. Which one fits depends on the lock already in the door and the condition of the frame, and we check both on the walkthrough.
What we will not do is cut a standard strike into a thin aluminum frame and hope. If the frame is cracked, the pivots are worn or the closer cannot hold the door shut against wind off the street, those are fixed first, because a release on a door that does not latch is not a lock at all.
Is a dial-code panel or a row of buttons better for a building with about fifty apartments?
For fifty apartments, most boards here end up with a dial-code or directory panel. A row of fifty buttons takes up a lot of wall, is slow for visitors to scan and puts every apartment one press away from a stranger trying buttons at random. A code panel lets a visitor enter an apartment number or scroll a directory, and it can show unit numbers rather than names if the board prefers.
Buttons still make sense for buildings of a dozen or so apartments, and for residents who find screens hard to use. The deciding factors are who lives in the building, how often visitors come, and whether the board wants residents to answer on phones as well as stations. We show both options on the same quote.
I rent in a Canarsie three-family and the buzzer to my floor is dead. Can I book the repair myself?
You can send us the details, but the owner has to authorize and pay for work on the building's system. Brick Underground's NYC intercom guide makes the same point: repairs need the building's authorization, and in some buildings the super handles them. The quickest route is to tell your landlord in writing exactly what fails, for example that the bell rings but the release does not open, or that your station is silent while the others work.
If your landlord asks us to look, we test the whole system rather than just your station, because a dead floor in a three-family is often one broken pair or splice that can be repaired without replacing anything else.
Shops and repair businesses
Our tire shop on Remsen Avenue pulls the bay doors down at closing. Can customers picking up late ring us at a side door while the bays stay shut?
Yes, and it is one of the most practical jobs we do on Remsen Avenue. A station on the pedestrian side door, with a camera, lets a customer who arrives after the bays come down ring the office. Staff see and talk to them on a monitor or phone and either walk out or release the side door, and the bays never have to go up.
If the side door opens into the shop floor rather than an office, we usually suggest answering without a release and walking the customer in, because a release there gives a stranger access to the whole shop. If the shop also has apartments above with their own door, that door stays on its own system.
