York County, Maine
Licensed, insured electrical work for Lyman homes and businesses, with the owner on every job.
Lyman is a town of ponds and pine woods between Alfred, Waterboro and the Saco River towns, with its one village at Goodwins Mills. About 4,600 people live here, most in single-family homes along Routes 202, 5, 35 and 111 and around Swan, Kennebunk and Bunganut ponds. For those households, Goodnow Electric, a Maine master electrician working out of Westbrook, takes on service and panel upgrades, charger circuits for electric cars, standby generators, rewiring and lighting, and answers urgent calls around the clock. The owner is there on each job.
Lyman's roughly 2,300 homes are younger than the town's 1780 founding suggests. The Great Fires of 1947 devastated Lyman, and Census estimates show only about 8 percent of homes built before 1940, with about 17 percent from the 1940s and 1950s and about 29 percent from the 1960s and 1970s. The median year built is 1979. About 95 percent of homes are owner-occupied, higher than in neighboring Alfred or Dayton, and nearly 13 percent are mobile homes. Around 370 homes are held for seasonal or recreational use, a sizable share for an inland town with three large ponds. That mix brings postwar ungrounded wiring, 100-amp services on 1970s ranches, mobile home services with their own rules, and camps that were wired for summer weekends.
Oil is the main heat in Lyman: the Census puts it in about 65 percent of occupied homes, with propane at about 20 percent. Wood covers about 9 percent, electricity about 4 percent, and utility gas less than 1 percent. The small electric share means most Lyman panels have never carried a heating load, so switching to heat pumps usually brings the biggest demand the service has ever faced. The town treats that seriously, and its Code Enforcement Office has reminded residents that a mini-split is electrical work needing a permit and an inspection. For EV owners, Efficiency Maine's off-peak program puts $400 toward a qualifying home charger.
Central Maine Power serves Lyman, and the town's electrical fee schedule charges service work by the CMP customer, with the account number on each application. The town is heavily wooded, largely with pine that returned after the 1947 fires, and that timber is what lands on the lines. Two recent statewide storms show the scale: in October 2017 wind knocked out more than 400,000 Maine customers, some for more than a week, and in December 2023 about 300,000 outages followed. When the power drops, homes on private wells lose water, and camps by the ponds often sit at the far end of long lines.
Settled as Swanfield in 1767, the town was incorporated as Coxhall in 1780 and renamed Lyman in 1803 after the merchant Theodore Lyman. A sawmill and gristmill built at Goodwins Mills in 1782 grew into the town's only business center, part of which lies in Dayton; firefighters saved it during the 1947 fires, and the Levi Foss House there is on the National Register. Water mills once ran at the outlets of Swan Pond and Kennebunk Pond. Today the ponds, the Kennebunk River and the woods define the town, with farms, camps and newer homes set along its roads.
Lyman runs its own electrical inspections. The Code Enforcement Office issues electrical permits during business hours, only to the licensed electrician doing the work, and the town employs its own electric inspector. Wiring stays exposed until that inspector has signed off, and an inspection needs 48 hours' notice. Near water, shoreland zoning reaches 250 feet from a great pond or river and 75 feet from a stream, and structures are generally kept out of a 100-foot buffer along the ponds. Goodnow Electric pulls the permit and meets the inspector on site.
Commercial, solar, smart home and new construction work are covered on our full list of electrical services.
Before you call, it can help to read whole-house vs. portable generators for Maine homes, why LED lighting upgrades pay back fastest, and electrical planning for a new home in Southern Maine.
More resources: answers to common electrical questions, our generator sizing guide, and electrical tips and guides for Maine homeowners.
“I couldn’t be happier with the work and the service Goodnow Electric provided! Easy to schedule with, easy to work with, and they went above and beyond the work we had requested when an additional issue came up. Highly recommended!”
Jeffrey Wetherhold • July 2025 • Google Review
Tell us what you need done and where; a licensed electrician will reply with a written quote.
