Lighting Services in Pownal, Maine

Lighting in Pownal starts with the fact that a third of the town's houses are older than 1940. Rooms in houses of that age were laid out for lamps and a single ceiling drop, with plaster ceilings, low attics and few switches, and a grid of recessed cans rarely suits them. Wall sconces, flush ceiling fixtures and switched receptacles for table lamps usually fit better, and new cable can be fished through old framing with care rather than by opening whole ceilings. In an old kitchen, under-cabinet LEDs and a pendant over the work table do more than any number of downlights, and dimmers soften rooms that were built for lamplight.

Outdoors, Pownal is dark in a way closer-in towns are not, with Bradbury Mountain State Park beside Route 9 and house lots set by zoning at 2.07 acres or more. A lit house number at the end of the drive helps an ambulance find you on an unlit road. A light over the woodpile, beside the path to the propane tank and on the barn door earns its keep every winter evening, and a fixture pointed at the ground rather than outward keeps the stars visible over the fields and the glare off the road. Photocells and timers stop those lights from burning through the day, and motion sensors bring them on only when someone is actually outside.

Every outdoor circuit needs weatherproof boxes and covers, cable buried at the depth the code sets or protected in conduit, and GFCI protection where required, and a barn light is far more useful when it can be switched from the house. LED fixtures cut the cost of a light left on through evening chores, and a ceiling fan in a warm upstairs bedroom needs a fan-rated box rather than the one the old fixture hung from. Goodnow Electric installs recessed, surface, under-cabinet, landscape, security and fan fixtures, and any new wiring goes through a Pownal electrical permit, inspected by the code enforcement officer who also serves as the town's electrical inspector.