Lighting Services in Eliot, Maine

Eliot is a town of long driveways and dark roads. Many homes sit well back from Routes 101, 103 and 236 or down lanes toward the river, and after dark the walk from the car to the door, the path to a barn or the steps to a dock can be pitch black. Motion-activated fixtures at the garage and doors, photocell lights on posts along the drive, and low-voltage landscape lighting on steps and walkways solve that without leaving floodlights burning all night. Near the Piscataqua and Sturgeon Creek, outdoor fixtures and connections should be rated for wet locations, since river fog and spray are hard on cheap hardware.

The town’s older houses need care inside. A farmhouse or village house from before 1940 often has one ceiling fixture per room, if any, and plaster ceilings that make recessed lighting a careful cutting job. Wall sconces, under-cabinet lights and LED fixtures with low heat output are often better fits than a grid of cans, and dimmers let a single circuit serve several moods. In Eliot’s newer homes, the typical project is replacing builder-grade fixtures with LED recessed lighting, adding under-cabinet strips in the kitchen, or installing ceiling fans on properly rated boxes in bedrooms that get warm in summer.

Eliot has made energy use part of how the town runs itself, with solar arrays at the town garage and the landfill expected to supply about 95 percent of the electricity for its buildings, pumps, parks and stoplights. A household can follow the same logic: converting every remaining incandescent and halogen fixture to LED and adding occupancy sensors in garages and basements trims the load before any heat pump or car charger arrives. Goodnow Electric installs recessed, under-cabinet, outdoor, landscape and security lighting, ceiling fans, dimmers and controls, and provides a free written estimate first. Outdoor lighting near the water is also worth aiming carefully, keeping the light on the path, the steps or the dock and off the neighbors’ windows and the river itself.