York County, Maine
Licensed, insured electrical work for Waterboro homes and businesses, with the owner on every job.
Waterboro is York County’s lake-and-pine-barrens town: North, South and East Waterboro, the Lake Arrowhead Community, Little Ossipee Lake and more than 8,000 residents spread along Routes 4, 5 and 202. Houses here run from postwar rebuilds to lake camps turned year-round, and each raises its own wiring questions. Goodnow Electric, holder of Maine master license MS60021971, takes on service upgrades, car-charging circuits, standby power, rewiring, lighting and after-hours calls in town, with the owner at each job, a free written quote, and the permit and inspection arranged by the shop.
Waterboro’s housing is far younger than its 1787 incorporation would suggest, and the reason is fire. The Great Fires of 1947 burned about three-quarters of the town’s land, including the town center, and most houses and farms built before then were lost. Census estimates show only about 6 percent of today’s roughly 3,540 homes date from before 1940. Building picked up long after the fire: roughly 29 percent of homes date from 1960 to 1979, 31 percent from 1980 to 1999 and 26 percent from 2000 on, which puts the median house at 1983. About 90 percent are single-family detached houses and nearly 7 percent are mobile homes. For wiring, that means fewer knob-and-tube attics and more 1970s and 1980s panels, some now 40 to 50 years old, plus lake cottages, since the Census counts about 560 seasonal homes in town.
Heating oil still warms about 66 percent of occupied Waterboro homes, according to the Census Bureau’s five-year survey. Next come propane at about 14 percent and wood near 10, while electric heat sits around 5 percent and piped gas below 2. Those numbers explain why services here are being rethought. Replacing a boiler with cold-climate heat pumps shifts winter heating onto the meter, and a car charger in the garage stacks a second big load on top. A 100-amp panel installed in 1978 was sized for lights, a range and a well pump, not for heating a house in January and charging a car overnight.
Every Waterboro meter belongs to Central Maine Power, and the utility’s maps assign the town to its Alfred district. With lines threaded through pine woods, outages here mostly begin with a falling tree. Heavy snow on April 4, 2024 knocked out more than 90,000 of the roughly 129,000 customers CMP serves in York County; news coverage listed Waterboro as one of the places with several trees down across wires and roads, and the utility cautioned that some homes might wait five days. Statewide, the October 2017 windstorm topped 400,000 outages. A house that depends on a well pump, a sump pump and an oil burner loses water, drainage and heat at the same moment.
Waterboro was incorporated in 1787 and burned twice: South Waterboro in 1911 and most of the town in 1947, when about 90 percent of the cottages on Little Ossipee Lake were destroyed. What survived is worth knowing. The Elder Grey Meetinghouse in North Waterboro dates to 1806, and the Dennis Johnson Lumber Company Mill on Route 5 ran on water and then steam from 1869 to 1963. The 2,140-acre Waterboro Barrens preserve protects pitch pine, and Ossipee Mountain rises to 1,058 feet. Lake Arrowhead, laid out during the 1960s around a man-made lake, crosses into Limerick.
Waterboro’s code enforcement office issues building, internal plumbing, shoreland zoning, sign and demolition permits, several through an online portal, and the town adopted the 2015 International Building Code under the state code in 2018. Wiring is absent from that list because the Maine Electricians’ Examining Board handles it, sending state inspectors across York County; any job started July 1, 2026 or later is judged against the 2026 edition of the National Electrical Code. Part of Waterboro lies inside the Saco River Corridor, which means a project close to the Little Ossipee River can also land before the Corridor Commission.
Commercial, solar, smart home and new construction work are covered on our full list of electrical services.
Planning ahead? Read electrical planning for a new home in Southern Maine, whole-house vs. portable generators for Maine homes, and why LED lighting upgrades pay back fastest.
More resources: answers to common electrical questions, our generator sizing guide, and electrical tips and guides for Maine homeowners.
“I highly recommend Goodnow Electric! We had a couple of small issues at my mother's house, and my initial call was responded to quickly by Brett with a "can do". Before those little things were scheduled, another more concerning issue cropped up.”
Joyce Brown • May 2025 • Google Review
Tell us what you need done and where; a licensed electrician will reply with a written quote.
