Harvey Cedars · North end
Harvey Cedars, washed properly
Harvey Cedars is a narrow borough on the northern half of the island, at one of the slimmest points on the whole eighteen miles.
The housing
Heavily rebuilt after 2012, so a high proportion of the stock is modern, elevated and tall — three usable levels above a ground-floor entry is common. Cedar shake, painted fibre cement and PVC trim dominate, with a good deal of glass facing both water.
The exposure
The island is so narrow through the borough that a house can take ocean salt on one elevation and bayside damp on the other, and both are working on it at the same time. The bay-facing walls grow algae faster than almost anywhere on the island because the air off the meadow is humid and the afternoon shade is deep.
Harvey Cedars crosses the pinch point of the island, and that single fact drives most of the exterior work here. Ocean and bay are close enough together that one house routinely presents two completely different cleaning problems on opposite walls: an east elevation carrying dry salt crust and UV-bleached finish, and a west elevation carrying live algae in the shadow lines. Treating them the same is the commonest mistake made here, and it shows up within a season as one clean wall and one that greened over again by August. The post-2012 rebuild adds the other constant, which is height. These are tall houses on small footprints, and the top of a three-storey gable in Harvey Cedars is a genuine reach — the difference between a quote here and the same house on a wider mainland lot is mostly the equipment needed to get to the top of it safely.
Working here
There is very little room between houses here, and much of the bay side is reached through the property rather than around it. Boom and ladder work is the norm on the newer stock simply because of how tall it is.
Around Harvey Cedars
The work comes from the Long Beach Boulevard spine running the length of the borough; the bayside streets around Sunset Park; the oceanfront blocks behind the replenished dune line; the narrow midsection near the Harvey Cedars Bible Conference.
On cost in Harvey Cedars
Height and tight side clearance are what move the number here, not the size of the house on paper. A modern elevated build with three levels above grade prices well above an older two-storey of the same square footage, because the whole job is worked off ladders or a lift. Bay-side elevations often need a second treatment the ocean side does not.
Because Harvey Cedars sits at one of the narrowest points on Long Beach Island, a single house here regularly needs two different treatments on two different walls — salt crust on the ocean elevation and live algae on the bay one.
The borough's post-2012 rebuild left it with an unusually tall housing stock for the island, so the practical constraint on almost every job here is safe access to the top of a three-storey gable rather than the surface area itself.
Harvey Cedars Borough handles permitting. Washing generally does not require a permit; staining, sealing and coating do count as home improvement in New Jersey, and registration has to be current before a permit is issued for it.
Most relevant here
What Harvey Cedars owners run into
The work that actually applies to this stretch of island.
Trying to work out the order to do things in?
Tell us what needs doing and when you need it by. We will find a crew that covers your street. No cost to you, no obligation to hire.
Near Harvey Cedars
Big lots, cedar-clad contemporaries and deep bayfront with private docks. The most restoration-heavy end of the island.
Also available in Harvey Cedars
Less often asked for here, but covered.