York County, Maine
Licensed, insured electrical work for Dayton homes and businesses, with the owner on every job.
Dayton lies along the Saco River between Lyman, Hollis, Buxton, Saco and Biddeford, and was set off from Hollis in 1854. The old farming town is now mostly residential, with about 2,300 people and Routes 5 and 35 crossing within its borders. Goodnow Electric, a Westbrook-based Maine master electrician, takes Dayton calls for panel and service upgrades, EV charger circuits, standby generators, rewiring, lighting and emergencies at any hour. The owner is present at each job, and every estimate is written and free.
Much of Dayton was built within living memory. The Census puts the typical home's construction year at 1990: roughly 36 percent went up in the 1980s and 1990s and about 28 percent after 2000, while only around 14 percent are older than 1940. The Great Fires of 1947, which burned two-thirds of the town and 27 of its homes, explain part of that gap. Nearly 90 percent of households own the place they live in, about 89 percent of dwellings are detached single-family houses, and mobile homes and small multi-family buildings each account for roughly 5 percent. So an electrician here meets a fuse box less often than in older towns, and meets plenty of panels from the 1980s and 1990s that are now being handed heat pumps, EV chargers and generators they were never designed to carry.
Oil is Dayton's main heat. The Census finds it in about 64 percent of occupied homes, followed by propane near 14 percent, wood near 10 and electricity near 7. Around 1 percent heat with solar, and utility gas does not show up in the count at all. With that much oil in use, many boilers and furnaces here are headed for replacement, and when a heat pump takes over it lands as new electric load on a panel that may be decades old. For households adding home EV charging, Efficiency Maine takes $400 off qualifying off-peak Level 2 models.
Outages in Dayton usually start with a tree: houses line wooded roads and the Saco River valley, and wind or ice brings limbs onto the wires. More than 400,000 Maine customers went dark in the October 2017 windstorm, a few of them for upward of a week, making it a bigger weather outage than even the 1998 ice storm; the December 2023 storm added roughly 300,000 outages statewide. The town posts floodplain maps covering the Saco corridor. On a private well, losing power means losing water, and the oil burner and sump pump quit at the same moment.
The Saco River shaped Dayton. Logs once floated downstream to Saco's sawmills, Nathaniel Goodwin built the first local mill in 1782 at Goodwins Mills, where Swan Brook drops 33 feet, and a sawmill and gristmill went up at Union Falls in 1806. A covered bridge to Buxton stood at Union Falls from 1860 until 1921. In 1951 Central Maine Power built Skelton Dam, a hydroelectric station on the river. Route 5 follows the old Sokokis Trail. The 1947 fires took the town hall along with homes and barns, which is why so much of Dayton is newer construction.
Building and plumbing permits in Dayton come from the Code Enforcement Office at 33 Clarks Mills Road, which also posts the zoning and floodplain maps. Its printable forms cover a building permit and an internal plumbing permit; there is no town electrical permit form. Where the state oversees electrical work, the Electricians' Examining Board requires a state electrical permit for commercial buildings, homes of two or more units, and any building served by more than one meter. Goodnow Electric pulls whatever a given job calls for. Any installation started from July 1, 2026 on is held to the 2026 National Electrical Code.
Commercial, solar, smart home and new construction work are covered on our full list of electrical services.
Homeowners here often read why LED lighting upgrades pay back fastest, electrical planning for a new home in Southern Maine, and whole-house vs. portable generators for Maine homes.
More resources: answers to common electrical questions, our generator sizing guide, and electrical tips and guides for Maine homeowners.
“Brett was super responsive when we called. He had John out to our house 48 hours later! Brett and John were both very friendly and John did excellent work! Would highly recommend Goodnow Electric and will use them again when needed. 10/10!”
Gina McCurdy • July 2025 • Google Review
Tell us what you need done and where; a licensed electrician will reply with a written quote.
