Questions to ask before you hire a permanent holiday lighting company

The checklist at a glance

Choosing a permanent holiday lighting company comes down to six questions, and most of them are about your house rather than the lights. A roofline system stays on your fascia for years, so whoever you hire is making decisions about your trim, your roof edge and your evenings for a long time. Ask every company the same questions, get the answers in writing, and the right choice usually becomes obvious.

The rest of this guide takes each question in turn, with the answer we give when a homeowner puts the same question to us.

Where exactly will it be fastened

This comes first because it has the longest consequences. A permanent channel should mount to the fascia board or tuck under the drip edge, the metal flashing along the lower edge of the roof. It should never be screwed through a shingle or slid beneath a shingle course, because every opening in the roof surface is a place for meltwater to travel during a March thaw. Our post on whether permanent lights damage your roof shows what a bad install looks like.

Ask the installer to stand in your driveway and trace the line with a finger. Then ask what your fascia is made of and what they will fasten into. The honest answer depends on the house. A Troy colonial may have aluminum-wrapped wood fascia, a newer Macomb County build may have vinyl or fiber cement, and a pre-war house near a downtown may still have its original painted wood. Each one takes a different fastener, and a company that uses one screw for everything is not looking closely.

Two follow-ups belong on the same visit. First, ask what touches the gutters, since they shift under ice and eventually get replaced. Second, ask how the channel sits relative to the drip edge a roofer would swap out at the next re-roof, and who removes and refits it if that day comes.

Insurance: which certificate to ask for

Every company will say it is insured. The Michigan Attorney General's consumer guidance on building and remodeling suggests a sharper question: insured for what? That guidance notes that contractor coverage often relates to injuries on the job and may not cover poor workmanship or damage to your property, so the word alone tells you very little.

For roofline work, ask for a certificate of insurance that shows two lines:

1. General liability. This is the line that usually responds if the work damages your house or the one next door. Ask the agent what it excludes, since the Attorney General notes a policy may not cover poor workmanship. Look at the limit, the named insured and the policy dates.
2. Workers' compensation. This covers the people on the ladder. Second-story eaves in Troy and sloped lots in Rochester Hills are exactly the conditions that make this line matter on a lighting job.

Check that the business name on the certificate matches the name on your quote, and that the dates run through your install day. Ask for the certificate to come from the insurance agent, and phone that agent if anything on it looks off.

For the record, Macomb Power Washing Solutions carries $2M in general liability plus workers' compensation, and we send certificates before any work begins. You should expect the same paperwork from anyone you consider.

What the warranty covers, in writing

A permanent system has several parts that can fail in different ways: the diodes, the aluminum channel, the power supply, the controller and the wiring that joins them. When a salesperson says everything is covered, ask which of those parts they mean and get the answer on paper. The Attorney General's advice to put every promise into the written contract applies here more than anywhere, because a warranty question may come up years after the sale.

Ask for each of these in writing:

• Which parts are covered, by name.
• Whether labor to replace a failed section is included, or only the part itself.
• How long each part is covered, stated as a term you can read, not a phrase like "for years".
• How you make a claim and who comes out to look.
• What would void it, such as moving the channel or painting over it.

LightCast's warranty covers the track and the diodes. Whichever company you pick, read the terms before you sign rather than after a gable goes dark. For what actually wears out over time, see how long permanent lights last.

Compare price per lit foot

Divide each quote by the lit feet it covers, because a per-foot figure is the only fair way to line up two bids for the same roofline. For reference, LightCast runs $22–34 per lit foot, installed once, which puts a 150 ft colonial front at $3,300–$5,100.

Controller, app and zones

The lights are only as good as the controls that run them. Ask to see the app before you buy, on the installer's own phone if need be, and try the things you will actually do: set a warm white from dusk to 10pm, switch the house to red and green for December, turn the brightness down for a weeknight.

• Is there a dedicated white diode? An RGBW fixture makes white from its own white diode. An RGB fixture mixes white from red, green and blue, which is a different look. Ask to see white on a sample in person, and read why the white diode matters before you decide.
• How many zones, and where do they break? Zones let you light the front but not the back, run the garage on its own, and narrow a failed run to one zone without pulling anything down. On a Rochester Hills elevation with four gables, ask exactly where the zone lines fall.
• Where does the controller live? Ask where it mounts, what it plugs into and whether it needs your home Wi-Fi.
• What happens when the internet drops? Ask whether saved schedules keep running on their own. The answer varies by system, and you want to know it before the first ice storm knocks out your router.

On a LightCast system your phone handles colors, zones, brightness, schedules and effects, and warm white and full color come out of one fixture.

Who services it after install

A seasonal display has an obvious service window, because the company that hung it is around until it comes down in January. A permanent system has no end date. So ask who you call in the February of year three, when one zone stays dark after a freeze. Ask whether the company works in your area all year or only in the fall, how you report a problem, and whether your zone layout is written down so a technician can find the right run without guessing.

Ask, too, how the hardware handles a Michigan winter. Ice builds at the eave, snow sits along the gutter line for weeks, and every freeze-thaw cycle works on anything loose. You want LEDs, not filament bulbs, in a rigid channel that holds its line.

Here is what we can tell you. LightCast comes from Macomb Power Washing Solutions, a Michigan LLC on Hall Road in Clinton Township. The same company has people on ladders in Macomb and Oakland County in every month, cleaning gutters, roofs and siding. The hardware is rated for Michigan winters, every run sits on its own zone, so a fault is traced without pulling the roofline apart, and the track and diodes carry a warranty. Ask us how a warranty claim on a LightCast zone is handled, and get that answer in writing like any other.

Is the footage confirmed on site before ordering

Permanent channel is cut to your roofline, so a bad measurement turns into bad material. Ask how your quote was measured, whether someone checks the number at the house before anything is ordered, and how the price moves if the footage changes at that visit. A company that orders first and measures later is asking you to pay for its guess.

The stakes grow with the roof. A typical Troy colonial measures somewhere between 120 and 180 feet across its front, and Rochester Hills colonials with three-car or side-entry garages often reach 150 to 250 feet, much of it climbing gables. On houses like those, a missed peak or an eave counted short shows up as a real gap in the price and in the channel.

You can check any quote on your own before the first visit. Measure your roofline with LightCast from one straight-on photo taken at the street: it locates the roofline, you tap a garage door or front door for scale, and it counts peaks and valleys and gives you a permanent and a seasonal range side by side, all without uploading the photo anywhere. Our walk-through of getting a permanent lights estimate online shows what it returns.

Bring that number to every company you talk to. When you are ready to put these questions to us, request a LightCast estimate. We confirm every request within 24 hours, send insurance certificates before work begins, and confirm your footage on site before anything is ordered.

Where this applies

Typical roofline lengths and priced examples for these communities are on their own pages.

• Troy
• Rochester Hills

Sources

1. Michigan Department of Attorney General: Building and Remodeling, Advice for Homeowners michigan.gov