How Permanent Lights Are Installed on a Nashville Home
Permanent Lighting Solutions sells app-controlled permanent roofline lighting in Nashville, and our licensed, insured and certified installers fit it in one visit: an aluminum channel carried on the fascia or soffit, the lights seated inside it, and a controller wired indoors.
How are permanent lights installed?
Permanent lights go on in a fixed order: the roofline is measured, the channel is cut and colored, the channel is mounted, the runs are joined, the controller is wired indoors and the zones are set. Our installers do the mounting, joining and wiring in a single visit.
- Measure. Every foot of the roofline is measured on the house before anything is cut.
- Cut and color. The channel is cut to that measurement and colored to match your fascia.
- Mount. Our installers fix the channel along the fascia or under the soffit.
- Join. The lengths are joined into runs, with a mitered corner wherever the roof edge turns.
- Wire. The controller is mounted indoors and the runs are wired back to it.
- Set the zones. The zones are set and the system is switched on before our installers leave.
Weighing a kit against a professional install? Permanent lighting against DIY kits sets the two side by side, and the FAQ chapter on getting it on the house takes the install questions one at a time.
What happens before install day?
The roofline is measured on the house, and that comes first because everything else is cut from it. At the walkthrough the channel profile is chosen against your roof edge and its color is matched to the fascia, so the channel arrives made for your house.
The walkthrough is free, and it is also where the number for your house comes from. Send the house through the quote form and it is the first thing that happens.
Where does the channel attach?
The channel is fixed to the soffit or to the fascia, whichever your roof edge offers. The three profiles are the boxed eave, the open rafter tail and the steep gable rake, and the roof edge in front of the installers decides which one it is. Neither the gutter nor the roof surface is pierced by a fastener.
Whether that harms a roof or a gutter is answered in the FAQ entry on roof and gutter damage. For the gutter in particular, read permanent Christmas lights and gutters.
How are corners and gables handled?
Corners are mitered: each end of the channel is cut to the angle of the corner it meets, not bent around it. Every corner on the roofline gets the same cut, including the ones where a gable edge meets the eave, so the finished run looks like a single line from the curb.
A house with many gables has more corners, and so more cuts. How that adds up on a big house is on the large homes page.
Where does the controller go?
The controller goes indoors, usually in a garage or utility room with power and wifi, and nothing is mounted outside for it. Each controller covers up to 8 zones, and one account can hold up to 4 controllers, so a house with more roofline can add them.
Zones are what let the front of the house, a patio and a garage each run their own scene at the same moment.
How long does installation take?
Plan on 8 to 10 hours of installation for an average house. Weather or a crowded November can move the install date, and your own numbers come from the free walkthrough.
Bad weather reschedules the day, and so does a roof that is unsafe to work on. What stretches the hours is the size of the job, and the FAQ answers how long the install takes once the installers are there.
What is set up before the installers leave?
Our installers do not leave until the lights are running: the zones are programmed, the app is ready to use, and the ladders and offcuts are packed up and gone. The controller comes set up, so the only thing left to decide is which colors to run first.
From then on the looks and schedules change from your phone, and the app control page shows what it can do. How much power those schedules use over a night, a season or a year is in the Nashville electricity use tables.
What does it need afterward?
Rinse it when you rinse the gutters, and that is all the upkeep it needs. One light out does not darken the run, because the others keep shining. Nothing comes off the house for the winter, and nothing has to be put back in spring.
The care page explains what is covered, and the system page shows every part of the install up close.