These are the situations Bay Ridge owners, tenants, boards and businesses describe when they call: a landmarked stoop, a scaffold that came down, a cellar that took water, a back-door camera that saw nothing useful, a tenant who wants access, a co-op board that wants a report. Each is answered here in full and not repeated in the FAQ further down.
Stone fronts, scaffolds and the landmarks rules
We live on Bay Ridge Parkway between Fourth and Fifth Avenues, and the camera over our stoop has died. Do we need a Landmarks permit just to replace it?
Usually not, if the replacement is a true repair. The Landmarks Preservation Commission's guidebook says ordinary maintenance, repair and retrofitting of health, safety and utility equipment does not need a permit, and a dead camera swapped for one of similar size, shape and color, on the same bracket and in the same holes, fits that. What would need an application is a change: moving the camera to a new spot on the limestone, choosing a much larger or differently shaped model, adding cameras beyond the guidebook's limit of two per 25 feet of frontage for a small building, or running new exposed conduit across the front. Before we order a part, we photograph the old camera and its mounting, find the closest current model, and show you both side by side with the cut sheet. If the match is close, we replace it in one visit. If it is not, you can choose to apply for the change, and we give you the cut sheet and the description of the work for the filing.
A pointing crew had scaffolding on the front of our row house for a month, and since it came down the stoop camera shows nothing. What did they probably do to it?
The three most common things are that they unplugged it, cut it or covered it. Scaffolding on a Bay Ridge front usually sits right where the camera is, and crews often unscrew a camera to work around it, disconnect the cable at the junction box, or tape the camera and the cable to protect them from mortar and then forget to remove the tape. Sometimes the cable is cut where it passes through the wall, because the crew was raking out the joint around it. Before we go up a ladder, we test the cable from the recorder in the basement: if the run tests good, the fault is at the camera or its connector, and if it tests open or shorted, the cable was damaged somewhere between. We photograph what we find before touching it. If the damage came from the facade work, those photos and our written diagnosis are what you show the contractor. The repair itself is usually a re-termination at the junction box or a new short section of cable through the existing hole.
Cellars, storms and power
Our recorder sat in about two inches of water in the cellar during the October storm. It turned back on after it dried out. Is it safe to keep using it?
It may work for a while, but we would not trust it. Water that reaches the inside of a recorder leaves minerals and corrosion on the circuit board and the power connections, and the failures tend to show up weeks later: random reboots, a drive that starts reporting errors, a power supply that browns out and takes the cameras down with it. The bigger risk is the drive. A hard drive that got wet may hold your footage now and fail without warning later. On a visit after a flood we test the drive's health separately, copy off any footage you want to keep, inspect the board and power supply for corrosion, and give you a written price either to replace the drive and the supply or to replace the recorder. Whatever we replace, it goes back up off the floor, on a wall shelf or bracket with a battery backup beside it, so the next storm does not repeat the job.
Four of our eight cameras went black during a thunderstorm, and the other four are fine. Do we need four new cameras?
Probably not. When a group of cameras fails together and the rest keep working, the cameras that died usually share something: one power supply box feeding those four, one group of ports on a PoE switch, or one cable bundle passing through a single wall. A storm surge often kills that shared part and leaves the cameras themselves unharmed. We test the shared parts first. On an analog system that means checking the power supply's output at each channel. On an IP system it means checking whether the switch is still delivering power on those ports and whether the cameras come back on a known-good port. On our Brooklyn repair page, a power supply repair is typically $150 to $400, which is far less than four cameras. Only if a camera still fails on known-good power and cable do we price a replacement for it, one camera at a time.
The clock on our recorder has been hours off since a power cut, and a detective told us the time on our clip did not match the incident. Can that be fixed?
Yes, and it is worth fixing before the next time footage is needed. Recorders keep time on a small internal battery and, if they are connected to the internet, can set themselves from a network time server. After a power cut, a recorder with a dead clock battery or no time server set can restart at a default date, or drift for weeks. The clips still exist, but the time stamp is wrong, and a clip that says 9:40 when the incident happened at 3:15 is harder for anyone to rely on. We set the correct time zone and daylight-saving rule, point the recorder at a time server, replace the clock battery where the model allows, and check that every camera's own clock follows the recorder. If you already handed over a clip with the wrong time, tell the detective the size of the offset; we can document it from the recorder's log for you.
Restaurants and storefronts
After the break-ins on Third Avenue, we checked our playback and the camera by the back door only shows the tops of people's heads. Can that be fixed without a whole new system?
In most cases, yes. A camera mounted high in a corridor and tilted steeply down records someone passing but never their face, because the angle shows the crown of the head and the shoulders. The fix is usually to move the camera lower and further back, so it looks along the corridor toward the door at about head height, or to add a second camera facing the door from the other side. Both can often reuse the existing cable with a short extension. The other common problem by back doors is light. A door that opens from a dark corridor onto a bright alley, or a corridor lit only by an exit sign at night, defeats many cameras, and police advised restaurants after the August 2026 break-ins to add lighting. We look at the camera's night image with the lights as they are at 3 a.m., adjust exposure and infrared settings, and recommend a light where the camera simply cannot see. We price the move and any extension in writing before doing it.
Two-families, co-ops and the people who share the cameras
We own a two-family on 73rd Street, and the upstairs tenant wants to see the stoop camera on her phone. Can she get the shared cameras without seeing ours?
Yes, on most recorders from the last decade. The recorder has an administrator account, which stays with you as the owner, and it can have additional users with permission to view only the channels you choose. We set up a user for the tenant with the stoop, the vestibule and the shared side alley, and no access to any camera inside your own space or the backyard if that is yours alone. She installs the same app on her phone and signs in with her own account, and if she moves out you delete her user without changing anything else. Two rules go with it. The shared cameras must cover common areas and must not look into either apartment, which is also what Brick Underground's guidance on building cameras says. And if she needs a clip after an incident, she asks you to export it; viewing rights do not need to include the ability to download or delete footage.
The monitor at our co-op's front desk has been blank for weeks, but the super says the cameras are still recording. What is actually broken?
If the recorder is recording and the cameras show on the app, the fault is between the recorder and the monitor. That chain is the video output on the recorder, a cable or extender to the desk, and the monitor itself. In many lobbies the recorder sits in a cellar room or the super's office and the picture reaches the desk over a long HDMI or VGA run, often through an extender that has its own small power supply. Those extenders fail, the power adapter gets unplugged by a cleaner, or the recorder's output resolution changes after an update and the monitor will not display it. We test each piece with a known-good monitor and cable, replace what failed, and set the recorder's output to a resolution the desk monitor supports. We also check the monitor's layout so the doorman sees the cameras the building actually needs at the desk: the vestibule, the package room and the elevator, rather than sixteen tiny squares.
The managing agent at our Shore Road co-op wants a written condition report on the camera system before the board votes on repairs. What would that include?
A list of every camera, where it is, what it covers and whether it works; the recorder's make, model, age, drive size and how many days of footage it is actually keeping; the condition of the power supplies, switches and battery backup; the state of the cabling where we could inspect it; and any camera whose picture is unusable at night. For each fault we give the repair and its written price, and we separate what needs fixing now from what is near the end of its life and can be planned for. We also note anything that affects the board's risk, such as a camera aimed into a unit, a recorder on a cellar floor, or an administrator password that nobody at the building knows. The visit itself begins with the $150 service call. The managing agent receives the report, and the board decides what to approve.
Brands and parts
Our system is Hikvision. After the FCC's 2022 order, can we still get a camera that works with our recorder?
Usually yes. The FCC rules adopted in November 2022 bar new equipment authorizations for covered companies, Hikvision and Dahua among them. Dahua said at the time that products already authorized were not affected, and the FCC asked for comment on what to do about existing authorizations. In practice that means the range of new models from those makers sold in the United States is narrower than it was, and some exact replacements are hard to find. It does not mean your recorder stops working. Most IP recorders from those brands accept other makers' cameras through the ONVIF standard, so we can often fit a camera from another brand that the recorder sees and records like the original, with the trade-off that some brand-specific features may not carry over. If the recorder itself is failing, we give you the choice of a like-for-like recorder where one is available or a different brand that keeps your existing cameras and cables.
