NYS and NYC M/WBE Certified Contractor
When you open up a wall in a Barnum Island home that took two to eight feet of water and sewage during Sandy, you don’t always know what you’re going to find. Mold in the framing. Compromised subfloor. Asbestos in the floor tiles or pipe insulation that was there long before the flood ever hit. We don’t stop the project when that happens — we handle it, document it, and keep things moving.
Most of the homes in Barnum Island were built from the prewar era through the 1960s. That means nearly every original single-family home on this island falls into the high-risk category for asbestos-containing materials and lead paint. It’s just the reality of the housing stock here, and it’s why working with a contractor who holds the proper abatement licensing matters as much as the demo work itself.
What you get on the other side of this is a project that’s done legally, documented fully, and built on a clean foundation — not one where corners were cut because the contractor wasn’t equipped to deal with what was actually there. In a community where median home values are approaching $700,000, that documentation protects more than just the project.
We’re a full-service environmental contracting and demolition firm based on Long Island. We hold the NYS Department of Labor Asbestos Handling Contractor License — the credential required by New York State law to legally disturb, remove, and dispose of asbestos-containing materials. That’s not a bonus credential in Barnum Island. It’s a prerequisite for doing the job right.
We’ve been serving the South Shore Nassau County corridor — including Barnum Island, Island Park, Oceanside, Long Beach, and the surrounding communities — throughout the post-Sandy recovery period. That context matters here. We’re not going to show up on Austin Boulevard and figure out the island’s access constraints on the fly. We know this area, we know what these homes have been through, and we know what it takes to bring a project to completion without leaving the homeowner holding a liability.
Every project comes with disposal documentation — a chain of custody from your property to a licensed facility. That paperwork follows your home for as long as you own it.
It starts with a pre-project assessment before anything is touched. In a home built before 1980 — which describes most of Barnum Island’s single-family housing stock — that means testing for asbestos-containing materials and identifying any lead paint that could be disturbed during demo. The scope of work gets written down before the first tool comes out. Nothing is assumed. Nothing gets skipped because it’s inconvenient.
From there, the Town of Hempstead building permit gets pulled — in our name, as the licensed contractor of record. Barnum Island is an unincorporated hamlet, so permit authority runs through the Town of Hempstead Building Department, not a village office. If a contractor ever asks you to pull your own permit, that’s a signal they may not be licensed to pull it themselves.
Once permits are in place and any hazardous materials have been properly abated and documented, the structural demolition work begins. Equipment access into Barnum Island runs through Austin Boulevard and Long Beach Road — there’s no secondary route — so we schedule and plan haul logistics around those constraints from the start, not discovered after the fact. When the work is done, you get a clean site and a full paper trail showing exactly how every material was handled and disposed of.
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We’re not a junk removal company offering light shed teardowns. We perform licensed residential and commercial demolition — interior selective demo, full gut renovation demolition, structural teardowns, and post-flood damage removal — with full environmental compliance built into every project.
For Barnum Island homeowners, that typically means the job involves more than just demo. It means pre-project asbestos and lead paint testing on homes built before 1978. It means mold assessment and remediation on properties that have seen repeated flooding from Sandy and the nor’easters that have come since. It means handling water-damaged framing, compromised subfloor systems, and flood-affected foundations that don’t show up on a surface inspection. All of that falls within our scope — you’re not calling a second contractor when something unexpected turns up.
On the commercial side, we bring the same licensed, documented approach to larger-scale projects in Nassau County. Whether the project is a full interior gut on a canal-front property near Shell Harbor, a structural teardown in the Island Park area, or a post-storm emergency removal, the process stays the same: assess, permit, abate, demolish, document. Every time.
Yes — and there are no exceptions for minor work. Barnum Island is an unincorporated hamlet within the Town of Hempstead, which means permit authority runs through the Town of Hempstead Building Department. The Town requires a building permit for any demolition of any building, structure, or portion thereof. That includes interior selective demolition, not just full teardowns.
The Town of Hempstead now has an online permit center where applications can be submitted, tracked, and inspected digitally — which has streamlined the process compared to what it used to be. The permit still needs to be pulled by a licensed contractor. Nassau County requires a General Contractors License for demolition work, and the permit should be filed in the contractor’s name. If someone offers to do your demo work and asks you to pull the permit yourself, that’s worth asking about before you sign anything.
It very likely contains asbestos-containing materials somewhere. Homes built between the 1930s and late 1970s routinely used asbestos in floor tiles, ceiling texture, pipe insulation, joint compound, roofing materials, and more. A 1950s Cape Cod or ranch-style home in Barnum Island — which describes a significant portion of the housing stock here — could have asbestos in multiple locations throughout the structure.
The only way to know for certain is through testing by a licensed inspector before any demolition work begins. Under New York State Department of Labor regulations, asbestos-containing materials above threshold quantities must be identified, properly abated, and disposed of by a licensed asbestos handling contractor before structural work starts. EPA NESHAP regulations also require advance notification before demolition on structures where asbestos is present. This isn’t optional, and it isn’t something that can be worked around. A contractor who skips this step is putting you, your neighbors, and themselves at legal risk.
Demolition costs on Long Island vary considerably based on scope, structure size, and what’s found during the pre-project assessment. A straightforward interior gut on a single-family home can run anywhere from $5,000 to $15,000 depending on square footage and what materials need to be removed. Full structural demolition of a complete home typically starts around $15,000 and can go significantly higher depending on lot access, debris volume, and disposal requirements.
In Barnum Island specifically, the cost calculation almost always needs to account for hazardous materials — asbestos abatement and lead paint compliance add to the project cost, but they’re not optional on pre-1980 housing stock. Flood-damaged homes may also require mold remediation as part of the scope, which affects the total. You won’t know the real number until someone who knows what they’re looking at has assessed the property. Any contractor who gives you a firm number over the phone without seeing the home first is guessing — and that guess usually gets revised upward once the walls open up.
More than most homeowners expect. The entire island was flooded with two to eight feet of water and sewage in October 2012. Homes that weren’t fully demolished and rebuilt after Sandy may still carry structural and environmental consequences that aren’t visible from the surface. Water-damaged framing can look fine until you open the wall. Mold in wall cavities can be extensive even when the drywall appears intact. Subfloor systems and lower-level framing that were repeatedly saturated may be structurally compromised in ways that only show up during demolition.
For a Barnum Island homeowner doing a renovation or gut project today, the pre-project assessment stage is especially important. It’s not just about asbestos — it’s about understanding what the flood did to the structure that hasn’t been addressed yet. A demolition contractor who also performs mold remediation and water damage assessment can identify and scope that work before the project starts, rather than stopping midway through because something unexpected turned up. That’s the difference between a project that finishes on schedule and one that doesn’t.
Yes — and that’s the practical reason many Barnum Island homeowners call us specifically. The alternative is hiring a demolition contractor, having them stop work when asbestos is found, calling a separate abatement company, waiting for that work to be completed and documented, and then restarting the demo. That sequence adds time, adds cost, and creates gaps in accountability between two separate contractors.
We hold the NYS Department of Labor Asbestos Handling Contractor License and perform both services under a single contract. When our demo crew opens a wall and finds asbestos pipe insulation or floor tiles that test positive, the project doesn’t stop — the same team handles the abatement, disposes of the material properly, and keeps the work moving. In a housing stock where nearly every original home in Barnum Island predates 1980, that integrated capability isn’t a niche offering. It’s the standard for how this work should be done.
Yes. We serve the South Shore Nassau County corridor and have worked in Barnum Island and the surrounding communities — including Island Park, Harbor Isle, Oceanside, and Long Beach — throughout the post-Sandy recovery period. We understand that access into Barnum Island runs through Austin Boulevard and Long Beach Road, that there’s no secondary route for heavy equipment, and that haul scheduling needs to account for those constraints from the start.
We also understand the community’s context in a way that matters for demolition work specifically. The housing stock here is older, the flood history is significant, and the permitting runs through the Town of Hempstead — not a village building department. These aren’t details you want a contractor learning on your project. The combination of local familiarity, proper licensing, and integrated abatement capability is what makes the difference between a project that goes smoothly and one that doesn’t.
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