These are the situations Brooklyn Heights homeowners, landlords, co-op boards, tenants and shopkeepers describe when they call about cameras on landmarked fronts, in divided houses and in storefronts. Each is answered in full here and not repeated in the FAQ further down.
Landmarked fronts and old surfaces
Our cameras went up before we bought the house, and we can't find any Landmarks paperwork for them. Does repairing them mean we have to apply now?
Not for a repair on its own. The Commission's guidebook treats ordinary maintenance and repair of safety equipment as work that does not need a permit, so fixing or replacing a camera in the spot where it already hangs, with something of similar size and finish, does not trigger an application. What a repair should not do is quietly add to the front of the house: a new spot, extra cameras beyond the guidebook's two per 25 feet on a small building, or a long run of visible conduit. If the existing setup already goes past that, we repair what you have without making it worse and point out what a future change would need. Questions about a specific building's history are for the Commission, not for us, and we will say so.
The camera by our areaway gate is clamped to the cast-iron railing. Can the replacement go back in the same place?
Often yes, as long as nothing has to be drilled into the iron. The guidebook says equipment must not be attached through cast iron or decorative surfaces, so the old clamp position can be reused if the new camera fits the same bracket or a clamp that grips without new holes. If the old installer drilled the railing, we do not add to that; we look for a nearby mortar joint or a plain masonry surface instead, or a spot inside the areaway that sees the gate just as well. Rust on the clamp is worth dealing with at the same time, since iron that is left to corrode around a fastener is harder to fix later than a camera.
The old vestibule camera left a cluster of holes in our original plaster. Can the new one cover them?
Usually. Many replacement cameras can sit on a mounting base or a small junction box wider than the camera itself, and choosing one that covers the old holes is part of how we pick the replacement. Where the old holes are spread too far apart, we place the new base over the worst of them and note the rest. We do not patch or paint walls, so any holes left uncovered are for your plasterer or painter, and in a vestibule with original moldings that is the right person anyway. We tell you before the work which holes will be covered and which will not, so nobody is surprised when the old camera comes down.
Divided houses, co-ops and tenants
Our house was split into apartments decades ago, and the camera cables pass through units we don't live in. How do you reach them without disrupting the tenants?
We start where we can reach without anyone's door: the recorder, the cellar, the hallway and the outside of the house. A tone generator and probe at the recorder end, plus a test at the camera, often show where a run has failed without opening anything inside an apartment. If the fault really is inside a unit, behind a closet wall or at a junction box in a ceiling, we tell you which apartment, what we need to reach and roughly how long it will take, so you can give the tenant notice and arrange a time. Where a run keeps causing trouble, the long-term fix is often a new route through the common hall or a stacked closet, priced separately, so future repairs never need to go through anyone's home.
Our co-op board is drafting a rule about video doorbells and hallway cameras. Should we hold off on repairing the building system until it passes?
Usually not. Rules like that are about what individual shareholders mount at their own doors, and Brick Underground's lawyer column notes that a board can adopt such a ban as a house rule, especially for cameras in common areas the board controls. The building's own lobby, entrance and elevator cameras are a separate matter: they are the board's equipment, and leaving them broken while a rule is debated only leaves the building without coverage. The one thing worth waiting for is any change in where the building's cameras point, for example away from apartment doors, so we re-aim once instead of twice. Tell us what the draft says and we will repair around it.
I rent in a Brooklyn Heights building and the entrance cameras have been dead for months. Does the landlord have to fix them?
Not necessarily. Brick Underground's reporting, quoting a tenant lawyer, is that city buildings are not legally required to have working security cameras, and that landlords are not obliged to show tenants footage outside a legal process. That does not make a dead camera system harmless, and many landlords will fix one once they know it is down, especially after a package theft or a break-in. The practical step is to tell the landlord or managing agent in writing which cameras are dark and since when. We take repair instructions from the building's owner or agent, so the booking has to come from them, and we are glad to give them a price.
Block cameras, break-ins and the precinct
Our Joralemon Street house hosts one of the street-facing block cameras from the association's plan, and it has gone dark. Whose job is it to fix it?
Under the arrangement the Brooklyn Paper described in 2017, the homeowners hosting those cameras owned the footage and agreed to give police access when needed, which in practice makes the camera part of your system and its upkeep yours. Check any paperwork you signed with the association for anything it says about maintenance, but in most cases the repair is booked like any other. It is usually a power or connection fault on a camera that has been outside for years, and the fix is the same as for your own stoop camera. While we are there we check that the recorder keeps the street camera's footage for as long as you expected and that its clock is correct, since a clip for the precinct is only useful if the time on it is right.
After a break-in we discovered our recorder hadn't saved anything for weeks. How do we find out when it stopped?
The recorder usually tells us. Most recorders keep a system log that records drive errors, recording stops, power losses and restarts, and the playback calendar shows the last day each camera has saved video. Between the two we can normally put a date on when recording stopped and why, whether the drive failed, filled without overwriting, lost power, or had its recording schedule switched off. That date matters for an insurance claim, a lease dispute or a conversation with a former installer. We write it into the repair notes, fix the cause, and turn on the warning that should have told you, so a silent failure becomes a phone alert next time.
Vestibules, carriage houses and the shop floor
The camera between our outer and inner doors fogs up on winter mornings whenever the street door opens. Is moisture getting inside it?
Usually the fog is on the outside of the window, not inside the camera. A vestibule between two doors sits at a different temperature from both the street and the hall, and when cold, damp air rushes in, the cool face of the camera collects condensation for a few minutes. If it clears within the hour, the camera is fine, and the fix is positioning: moving it slightly away from the outer door, adding a small hood, or using a camera with a heated or treated window. If the fog sits behind the glass and lingers, or there are drops or spots inside, the seal has failed and the camera needs replacing, at $250 to $600 on our Brooklyn list.
Our carriage house has one camera high on the front by the old loft door, and every heavy rain it drops out for a day. What is going on?
Almost certainly water at the cable entry. On many carriage houses the camera was mounted near the top of the facade and its cable pushed straight through the masonry beside it, and rain running down the wall follows the cable into the joint, into the connector or into the camera itself. When it dries out, the camera returns. We open the connection, look for corrosion and water marks, cut back and remake the joint if needed, reseal the wall entry with a drip loop so water falls off the cable instead of following it in, and check the camera for moisture inside. If the camera has been wet many times, replacing it is often cheaper than repeated visits.
Our medical office's cameras cover the waiting room and the front desk. What should we think about when they're repaired?
Mostly where the cameras look and who can see the recordings. A waiting room camera that also shows the screens at the front desk, or a corridor camera that looks into a treatment room when a door opens, is worth re-aiming while we are there. We keep cameras out of private spaces, check that the recorder and app logins belong only to the people you name, and remove accounts for former staff. Any rules specific to your practice, from your professional body or your own compliance adviser, are theirs to set, and we will follow what they tell you. Repairs in an open office are scheduled for before or after patient hours where possible.
Our Montague Street shop's cameras run on the same network as the card readers. Can you fix them without taking the payment system down?
Yes, with some planning. Before touching the network, we map which ports and devices belong to the cameras and which to the terminals, phones and computers, and anything that needs a restart of the switch or router is scheduled for an hour when you can spare it, or before you open. Most camera repairs, a camera, a cable, a drive or a recorder, never touch the payment side at all. Where cameras and terminals share one small switch, we may suggest giving the cameras their own, which keeps a camera fault from ever reaching the register. That is optional and priced on its own line.
