NYS and NYC M/WBE Certified Contractor
Great Neck Gardens sits on a peninsula with water on three sides — Manhasset Bay to the west, Long Island Sound to the north, Little Neck Bay to the east. When a storm hits, wind doesn’t just come from one direction. It wraps around, finds gaps in siding, lifts shingles from angles that a standard inspection misses, and drives water into places you won’t notice until mold is already growing.
The other thing worth knowing about this community: the overwhelming majority of homes here were built between the 1930s and 1960s. That matters because when a storm breaches the building envelope of a home that age, you’re not just dealing with a damaged roof or a wet basement. You may be dealing with disturbed asbestos in the roofing underlayment, insulation, or floor tiles — and lead paint exposed in walls and window frames. A general contractor without the right certifications can’t legally touch those materials in New York. We can, and we do it in-house.
What you get on the other side of a proper restoration isn’t just a repaired home. It’s a home that passes inspection, holds its value, and doesn’t surprise you six months later with a mold problem that a previous contractor left behind. At $1.7M median sale prices in Great Neck Gardens, the cost of cutting corners isn’t measured in repair bills — it’s measured in what your home is worth.
We are a Nassau County-licensed, full-service disaster restoration company serving Great Neck Gardens and the surrounding North Shore communities — including Thomaston, Kensington, and Great Neck Plaza. We operate 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, and we’re approved as an Emergency Response Contractor by the New York State Office of General Services. That’s not a marketing credential — it means the State of New York has already vetted us.
What separates us from most restoration contractors in the Great Neck Gardens market is the depth of what we’re licensed to handle. Beyond our Nassau County General Contractor license, we hold NYS DOL Mold Remediation, NYS DOL Asbestos Handler, USEPA Lead, and USEPA RRP certifications. In a community where most homes predate 1960, that’s not a specialty — that’s the baseline requirement for doing the job completely and legally.
We also handle your insurance claim directly. We bill the carrier, manage the paperwork, and remove the financial burden from your side of the process. Our clients have said it plainly: “Billed my insurance company directly. I highly recommend this company.” That’s the experience we bring to every job in Great Neck Gardens.
When you call after a storm, the first thing we do is get someone on-site fast. Mold begins growing within 24 to 48 hours of water intrusion — and in older Great Neck Gardens homes with wood framing and aging insulation, moisture moves quickly. Our emergency response team arrives ready to assess, document, and begin protective measures the same day, including tarping damaged roofs and extracting standing water before the damage compounds.
Once we’ve stabilized the property, we conduct a full assessment using thermal imaging cameras and commercial moisture meters. This step matters more than most homeowners realize. What you can see after a storm — the obvious damage — is rarely the whole picture. Water travels. It gets behind walls, under floors, and into ceiling cavities that a visual inspection won’t catch. We find it before it becomes a six-month mold problem.
From there, we handle every phase of the restoration under one roof: structural repairs, mold remediation, asbestos abatement if needed, and full reconstruction. Because Great Neck Gardens is an unincorporated hamlet within the Town of North Hempstead, permits for complete roof replacements and structural repairs go through the Town’s building department — not a village office. We know that process, we pull the permits, and we make sure every repair is code-compliant before we close out the job. You don’t have to figure any of that out on your own.
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Storm damage rarely stops at the surface, and in Great Neck Gardens, the chain of damage can move fast. A Nor’easter lifts shingles, water enters the attic, insulation gets saturated, and within 48 hours mold has a foothold. In a home built before 1960 — which describes most of the housing stock here — that same breach can disturb asbestos-containing materials or expose lead paint. Each of those phases requires a different certification to handle legally in New York State. We hold all of them.
Our storm damage restoration work covers emergency board-up and tarping, full water extraction and structural drying, mold testing and remediation, asbestos and lead abatement, roof repair and full replacement, siding and window restoration, and complete interior reconstruction. We don’t subcontract the hazardous materials work out to a third party and hope the timelines align. It’s all done in-house, which means fewer delays, one point of contact, and no liability gaps between trades.
For Great Neck Gardens homeowners, there’s also the insurance side of this. Storms on the North Shore — whether it’s a major Nor’easter or a remnant tropical system tracking up the Sound — are covered events under most homeowners policies. We work directly with your carrier, document the damage thoroughly, and bill them directly. You focus on your home. We handle the rest.
Mold can begin growing within 24 to 48 hours of water intrusion — and that window closes faster in older homes. Most of the housing stock in Great Neck Gardens was built between the 1930s and 1960s, which means wood framing, older insulation materials, and construction methods that don’t include the vapor barriers you’d find in newer builds. Moisture migrates more quickly through these structures, which is why the timeline between a storm event and a serious mold problem can be shorter than homeowners expect.
The practical takeaway is this: calling for emergency storm damage cleanup the same night or the morning after a storm isn’t being overly cautious — it’s the right call. Every hour of delay after water enters the structure increases the scope of remediation required. We respond 24 hours a day specifically because that window is real, and waiting until the next business day can turn a manageable water damage job into a full mold remediation project.
In most cases, yes — storm damage from wind, hail, falling trees, and rain intrusion is a covered event under standard homeowners insurance policies. That includes the kinds of damage Great Neck Gardens homeowners see most often: Nor’easter damage to roofs and siding, wind-driven rain entering through compromised windows or doors, and water damage from storm surge affecting lower-level spaces near Manhasset Bay.
What matters is how the claim is documented. Insurance carriers require thorough evidence of the damage — photographs, moisture readings, written assessments — before they approve a claim. If that documentation is incomplete or the scope of damage is underreported, your payout may not cover the full cost of restoration. We handle the entire claims process on your behalf, document everything properly, and bill the carrier directly. You don’t pay out of pocket while your home is being restored, and you don’t have to become an expert in insurance claims language to get a fair outcome.
It depends on the scope of the work. Temporary protective measures — tarping a damaged roof, boarding up broken windows, stopping an active water leak — can be done without a permit as emergency stabilization. But once you move into permanent repairs, the rules change. Complete roof replacements, structural repairs, changes to roofing materials, and any work that affects the building’s framing or envelope all require permits through the Town of North Hempstead Building Department.
This is worth understanding because Great Neck Gardens is an unincorporated hamlet, not an incorporated village. Unlike neighbors in Kings Point or Kensington who go through their own village building departments, Great Neck Gardens residents work through the Town directly. We hold a Nassau County General Contractor license and pull permits in this jurisdiction regularly. We handle that process for you — filing the applications, scheduling inspections, and making sure every repair is documented and code-compliant before the job is closed out.
Yes, and this is one of the most important things to understand before you hire anyone for storm damage restoration in a home of that age. Homes built before 1978 may contain lead-based paint, and homes built before the mid-1980s — which includes virtually all of Great Neck Gardens’ housing stock — may contain asbestos in roofing underlayment, floor tiles, pipe insulation, and attic insulation materials. When a storm breaches the building envelope, those materials can be disturbed.
Federal and New York State law require that contractors working in pre-1978 homes hold USEPA RRP (Renovation, Repair & Painting) certification when disturbing painted surfaces, and that any asbestos abatement be performed by a contractor holding a valid NYS DOL Asbestos Handler certification. A general contractor without those credentials cannot legally handle those materials — which means if you hire one, either the hazardous materials get left in place or the work gets done without proper handling, creating liability for you. We hold both certifications and handle asbestos and lead abatement in-house on every applicable job.
The Great Neck peninsula’s geography creates a specific storm exposure profile that’s different from most of Nassau County. Because the peninsula is bordered by water on three sides — Manhasset Bay, Long Island Sound, and Little Neck Bay — wind doesn’t approach from a single direction during major storms. Nor’easters in particular wrap around the peninsula, creating wind-driven rain exposure on multiple faces of a home simultaneously. That’s why roof damage after a Nor’easter here often involves more than the windward side — flashing failures, ridge cap damage, and soffit intrusion on the leeward side are common findings that a quick visual inspection misses.
Beyond wind and roof damage, the most frequent issues we see in Great Neck Gardens are ice dam formation along eaves during winter storms, basement flooding from saturated ground after heavy rain events, and structural damage from mature trees — the peninsula has many — coming down on roofs and fences. Hurricane season brings a different risk: storm surge affecting lower-lying areas near the bay, and wind speeds that exceed what Nor’easters typically produce. Each of these damage types requires a different response, and we’re equipped for all of them.
This is the right question to ask, and the fact that you’re asking it puts you ahead of most homeowners who call a contractor in the days after a major storm. After significant weather events on Long Island, unlicensed contractors — sometimes called storm chasers — move through high-value communities like Great Neck Gardens specifically because the property values are high and the urgency is real. They may have a truck, a website, and a friendly pitch, but no verifiable Nassau County license and no workers’ compensation or liability insurance.
The practical way to verify a contractor in Nassau County is to ask for their Nassau County General Contractor license number and confirm it with the county. You can also ask to see their certificate of insurance — general liability and workers’ comp — and call the carrier to confirm it’s active. Beyond the GC license, ask specifically about mold remediation, asbestos, and lead certifications if your home was built before 1978, because those require separate NYS and federal credentials that most general contractors don’t hold. We hold all of the above, and we’ll provide documentation before we start any work. In a community where homes regularly sell above $1.5 million, verifying who’s working on your property isn’t excessive — it’s the standard you should hold every contractor to.
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