Between 2013 and 2026, Lou Rubino inspected 13 homes in Astoria. The neighbourhood's core is 1910s-to-1930s brick — attached rows on twenty-foot lots, semi-detached two- and three-family houses with shared driveways and rear garages — and inspecting one is city work: flat roofs, parapets, party walls and a century of owners.
Rated 5.0 on Google as of August 2026 · U.S. Army veteran owned · NY licence #16000039568 · 516-330-3870
On a flat-roofed row house the roof is a floor you never walk and a system you cannot see from the street. Membrane, parapets, skylights and drainage all age in private, and the top-floor ceilings report the results afterwards. Lou gets up there where access allows — and where it does not, New York's rules require the report to say what was not observed and why.
The lot matters too. With most of an Astoria yard paved, every leader and drain has one job — move water away from the foundation — and decades of re-piped, re-routed drainage is where basements get their histories. A two- or three-family adds its own layer: separate systems, separate meters, and alterations made unit by unit.
Related: Buying a Queens co-op instead? · What an inspection costs · Schedule an inspection.
All three photographs are from Lou's own Astoria inspection reports, chosen because they show a building component and nothing that identifies a property or an owner.
A flat roof hides everything from the street: membrane seams, patches, drainage and parapet condition. Patching is normal maintenance — the report records what condition the membrane shows today and whether repair or further evaluation is the honest next step. How roofs are examined and reported.
A boiler's data plate gives its real age; the burn chamber and the piping around it give its real condition. Both go in the report so replacement budgeting is arithmetic, not argument. What an inspection costs against what it finds.
Water heaters have a known service life, and their installation — clearance, venting, the gas connection, the pan — matters as much as their age. All of it is checked where it sits. What the write-up looks like.
Chimney crowns, caps and screens are the cheap parts that protect the expensive parts. Cracked crowns and missing screens let water and animals into a flue, and the damage below can run for years unseen. What happens when part of a system cannot be seen.
A flat roof hides everything from the street: membrane seams, patches, drainage and parapet condition. Patching is normal maintenance — the report records what condition the membrane shows today and whether repair or further evaluation is the honest next step. How roofs are examined and reported.
All photographs are from Lou's own inspection reports for jobs in this area, screened so nothing identifies a property or an owner.
Lou covers Long Island, the five boroughs and Westchester from his base in Wantagh, and the archive behind these pages shows where that work has actually concentrated.
Also nearby: Flushing · Greenpoint · all 26 towns.
His Astoria file goes back to 2013. Yours would not be the first.
Not sure yet? Read what New York requires of your inspector or see a real report.