When to book Christmas light installation in Barrie (and when the lights go up)

Thanksgiving weekend is when most people in Barrie first think about Christmas lights. The leaves are coming down in Ardagh, somebody is up a ladder doing the eavestroughs, and the thought arrives: I should get the lights sorted while I am out here.

That is about the right week to think it. It is also later than most people assume. If you want a professional install in Barrie on the date you choose, book by the middle of October. After that you can still get on the calendar, but you are picking from what is left.

Here is how the season runs, and why.

A note on the picture at the top: that is one of our installs, a house in Midhurst just north of Barrie, with our trailer still in the driveway. Warm white along the eaves and up the peaks is the look most people ask for. If you want to see it on your own house, the Barrie page has a tool that builds a mockup from your address.

The calendar, start to finish

September: booking opens. The calendar is empty, so anyone who books now gets whatever date they like.

First half of October: the good window. Every weekend from late October to early December is still open. If you want the lights up on a particular Saturday, this is when you say so.

Late October: the first installs go up. Lights going up in October does not mean lights on in October. We set the timer for whenever you want them to come on, and the house just sits there ready until then.

November: the busy month. This is when most installs happen. The clocks go back on November 1 this year, it is dark a little after five, and that first dark drive home is what sends everyone to the phone at once. Weekend slots are usually gone by the third weekend of November.

Mid-November on: weekdays only. By now we are offering whichever weekday is left. That works fine if nobody needs to be home, and less well if you wanted to be there to walk the design.

First week of December: last installs. After that we are turning work away. It is not a sales line. There are only so many dry daylight hours in a week.

January: takedown. Usually the first or second week, before the deep cold. You do not need to be home. The lights come down, get labelled, and go into storage still cut to your house.

Two dates worth working back from

Most people have a day in mind, even if they have not said it out loud. It is usually one of these two.

• American Thanksgiving, November 26 this year. Families with relatives driving up from the States like the lights on when they pull in. That means an install by about November 20, and a booking by mid-October.
• December 1. The obvious date, which makes the last week of November the most contested stretch on the calendar. If December 1 is your date, treat mid-October as the deadline too.

Why earlier is better for the roof, not just the calendar

There is a practical side to this that has nothing to do with our schedule.

Lights are held on with clips that slide under a shingle tab or hook over the lip of the eavestrough. On a dry roof at 10 degrees, a shingle tab lifts easily and the clip seats with a click. On a frozen roof it fights you. A clip that never seated will hold all through November and then let go in the first heavy snow, usually the week before Christmas. We went through how that happens in the post on hanging lights without damaging your gutters.

Barrie sits in the snow belt, and the first snow that stays can turn up any time in November. An install done before that snow is a better install. It is also a safer day's work for the person on the ladder.

One more thing while the ladder is out. If your troughs are full of leaves, get them cleared before the lights go on. A packed eavestrough freezes into one solid block and pulls on every clip along it all winter. We do gutter cleaning in Barrie through October and November, and doing both in one stretch saves a second visit.

What happens after you book

1. You get a mockup and a price for your actual house. Most Barrie homes land between $600 and $1,500 for the season. A bungalow in Holly or Letitia Heights with a simple roofline is at the low end. A two-storey in Painswick or Innis-Shore with peaks and a garage return sits in the middle. That one price covers the lights, the design, the install, any fixes during the season, the takedown and the storage.
2. You pick a date. The earlier you book, the more of them there are.
3. We install. Commercial-grade LEDs, cut to your roofline so nothing bunches at the corners, clipped and never stapled. A straightforward bungalow goes up in a morning.
4. You set the timer and forget about it. If a section goes out in December, call us and we come back and fix it at no charge.
5. January, it all comes down. Nothing is left on the house.

If you are reading this in late November

Still call. We will tell you straight what is left, and a Tuesday install lights up just the same as a Saturday one. What we cannot do is promise the first of December to someone who phones on the twenty-eighth.

And if we are full, the fallback is not bad either: do the ground-level parts yourself this year, the porch posts, the railings and the shrubs, and leave the roofline alone. A second-storey eave in December is not the place to save a few hundred dollars.

Booking for this season

We are based in Horseshoe Valley, just up the road, and there is no travel charge anywhere in Barrie or the rest of Simcoe County. Every installer is covered by $2 million liability and WSIB.

Start with the Christmas light installation in Barrie page, where you can get a free mockup of your house and a quote. If you are outside the city, the main Christmas lights page covers the county, with separate pages for Midhurst, Innisfil and Oro-Medonte.