Shingle Springs Christmas Light Installation

On a few acres in Shingle Springs, the nearest outlet is sometimes on the barn, and the barn is clear across the pasture from the house. Sorting that out is the fun part of Shingle Springs Christmas light installation. The houses sit back off the road, the driveways wind through oaks, and a string of lights that looks fine in a subdivision just disappears out here. We’re a family crew of brothers from Folsom, a straight shot up Highway 50, and we’ll plan it with you on the phone. Call (916) 659-6549.

On a foothill property, power planning is half of any Shingle Springs Christmas light installation. We figure out which outlets are on which circuit, where a timer can live out of the weather, and how to get light out to the last stretch of driveway without a daisy chain of cords across the gravel. Outdoor-rated cords, connections kept up off the wet ground, and nothing strung where your truck or your horse trailer is going to drive over it.

Then we get the ladders out.

Holiday Lake is one of our favorite drives. The neighborhood is built around its own lake and walking trails, run by the Holiday Lake Community Services District, and a lot of the homes date to the seventies, some on two-plus acres. Those older rooflines are usually long and low, easy to light cleanly. The trick is the trees. They got big while nobody was looking.

Along French Creek Road, the lots run from under an acre to serious acreage with oak woodland. On the bigger places, we’ll usually suggest lighting the house, one or two feature trees near it, and the last stretch of driveway, instead of trying to light the whole property. It reads better from the road and it keeps the cord runs sane.

Sierra View Estates, the gated cul-de-sac of five-acre parcels off South Shingle Road, is newer ground with big views east toward the Sierra. Newer homes tend to have tall entries and wide garages, which is perfect for a lit wreath up high and garland around the front door. Elsewhere on South Shingle Road, it’s more of a mix: ranch houses, shops, fence lines, pasture. Keep going south toward Latrobe and the oaks thin out into open grassland, so a house on a rise can be seen from a mile off. Out there we put the effort into one bright roofline and the gate, because that’s what shows across the fields.

Over on the Ponderosa Road side, near Ponderosa High School, the homes are closer to the highway and a bit closer together. Those jobs look more like what we do in Cameron Park: roofline, porch, a few stakes, done.

The town got its name from a shingle machine set up near the springs in 1850, back when the spot was ringed with oaks and sugar pines. Plenty of both are still around, and they’re not the same job.

• Oaks are the best trees around for wrapping. We wrap the trunk and run strands out along the big limbs. The rough bark holds the wrap in place through wind and rain.
• Pines are tall and the lower limbs are usually gone. We’ll wrap the trunk up as high as it makes sense and leave the canopy alone. We don’t go up into a ponderosa canopy in December, and you don’t want us to.
• Fruit trees and ornamentals near the house can look great wrapped branch by branch, and they’re a lot less ladder.

Our tree lighting page has more on how we wrap.

Roofline lights go on eaves, gutters, peaks and gables with plastic clips. Clips hook the gutter or tuck under the shingle, and on tile they grab the tile lip. We don’t staple, nail or screw anything into your fascia. When we take them off in January, you won’t be able to tell they were ever there.

Pillar and column wraps work great on the big front porches a lot of foothill homes have. Stake lighting lines a walkway, the lawn edge, or the last part of a long drive. Irrigation out here can run in odd places, so we find the lines and heads before we push anything into the ground.

Lit wreaths go on the door, the garage, a gable, or the front gate. Lit garland goes on entries, porch railings, archways and banisters.

Every light, clip and cord comes off our truck. You don’t buy a single bulb, and you don’t spend an evening testing strands to find the one bad one. Everything gets a timer, so the display wakes up at dusk and shuts off at night without anybody walking out to the barn to flip a switch.

Storms come through the foothills in winter. If wind knocks a section loose or something goes dark, call (916) 659-6549; a brother comes back out and fixes it. Then in January we pull it all back down and cart it away. No lights left hanging on the house into spring, and no bins of tangled strands to store next to the feed.

We’re up and down Highway 50 all season with jobs in Cameron Park, Rescue, El Dorado Hills and Placerville, so a stop in Shingle Springs adds almost nothing to our drive. We also do businesses and churches, if you’ve got a storefront or a building that could use some light.

Free estimates, by phone. Tell us about the house, the trees, and how far it is from the road, and you’ll get a real number and a date. Call (916) 659-6549 or head to our contact page. And if the neighbor down the road always wins the “best lights” argument, well, we’ve been waiting for that call.