Boise is the only valley city where a light quote depends on whether your fascia is 1910 painted wood or 2015 fiber cement. Harrison Boulevard peaks, North End bungalow valleys under mature maples, low Bench ranch eaves and Harris Ranch two-stories all hang differently. We clip them. We do not staple them.
A roofline quote in Kuna is one conversation. In Boise it is four. Warm Springs Avenue and Harrison Boulevard hold 1890s-1910s Queen Anne and Colonial Revival with steep pitch, deep wrap porches and original or replicated half-round gutter. The North End and East End are 1905-1935 Craftsman bungalow and Foursquare with painted wood fascia, undersized four-inch gutter, and second stories you can only reach over mature landscaping. Depot Bench, Morris Hill and Hillcrest are 1940s-60s ranch on 3:12 and 4:12 roofs with eaves so short there is barely a place to seat a clip. Barber Valley, Harris Ranch and Bown Crossing are 2005-and-newer fiber cement two-stories with great-room window walls and narrow side yards. Peak height, pitch, gutter profile and ladder footing change on every one, which is why we quote per roofline instead of by the foot.
Every attachment point is a plastic clip. No staples, no nails, no screws, nothing that leaves a hole in your fascia or your shingles. That matters most in the North End, East End and along Warm Springs Avenue, where owners inside the local historic districts have kept original painted wood sash and trim in service for a century instead of swapping to vinyl. A staple hole in painted fascia is a water path, and you will not see what it did until the paint blisters two summers later. Worth checking yourself before you hire anyone: walk your front eave in daylight and look for a row of old staple punctures or rusted nail heads left by a previous installer. Half-round gutters also do not take the standard K-style gutter clip, so those rooflines get shingle-tab or ridge clips instead of something forced onto a lip it was never made for.
This is the part nobody checks until the breaker trips on December 3rd. A C9 incandescent bulb draws about seven watts. At twelve-inch spacing that is roughly 100 bulbs per 100 feet of roofline, about 700 watts, right around six amps. A 15-amp household circuit should not carry more than about twelve amps continuously, so two runs of incandescent C9 and you are finished — and on a 1920s bungalow that single exterior outlet is often sharing its circuit with the porch and a bedroom. LED C9 bulbs draw well under a watt each, so the same roofline runs on a fraction of an amp. Whatever you hang, put it on a GFCI-protected exterior outlet, use outdoor-rated cord, and leave a drip loop at every connection so meltwater off the eave runs onto the ground instead of into the plug.
October through early December is the working window. We would rather be standing in a bungalow valley on a dry November morning than a frosted one three weeks later. Clean the gutters first: the maple, elm, sycamore and honeylocust canopy over the North End, East End and Bench drops through October, and clipping a run over a packed trough means ice sitting on your lights in January. Wind gets its own line on the quote. Barber Valley and Harris Ranch catch raw canyon wind coming out of the Boise River canyon past Lucky Peak, and homes in the Highlands, Boise Heights and Warm Springs Mesa take nightly downslope drainage off the Boise Front out of Hulls Gulch and Crane Creek. Those rooflines get tighter clip spacing and anchored gable runs. Takedown is scheduled in January, before shaded eaves build ice.
If you own a single-story Bench ranch with a 3:12 roof, an accessible K-style gutter run across the front, and a ladder you are genuinely steady on, that is a two-hour Saturday and you do not need a crew for it. Same answer if all you want is a wreath and two porch columns lit. Where it stops being a homeowner job: two-story North End and East End houses where the only ladder footing is a flowerbed under a mature maple, steep Harrison Boulevard and Warm Springs pitches with hundred-year-old painted fascia and original detail, Southwest Boise and Harris Ranch peaks over a four-foot side yard, and any roof you would be climbing after the first hard freeze. If the honest answer at your house is that you can handle it yourself, we will say so at the quote.
Order matters. Boise sits at the low point of a partially enclosed valley, so from December through February wood smoke and PM2.5 pool under inversion and settle out as a gray film that only shows itself when the low winter sun rakes across a picture window. Add summer aphid honeydew off the maples and lindens and hard-water spotting from Boise City Canal and New York Canal sprinkler overspray, and a lit window wall in Harris Ranch or a Foursquare front bay in the North End can look worse with lights on it than without. We wash with 100% pure deionized water and no soap, so there is no mineral and no detergent residue left to spot, and the RainShield finish sheds the next round. Monthly and quarterly memberships, no contract, and quarterly members save $100 per cleaning.
ZIP codes: 83702, 83703, 83704, 83705, 83706, 83709, 83712, 83713, 83716 · Part of our wider Boise service area.
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Call in September or early October and get on the calendar for an October or November install. Boise's first hard freeze and first real snow usually arrive before people start thinking about lights, and steep North End and Warm Springs roofs are a different animal once there is frost in the valleys. Late bookings still get done when weather allows, but the safe, dry, cheap-to-access days are in the fall. We hold same-day and next-day quote slots, Monday through Saturday, 7am to 7pm.
No. Everything is hung on plastic clips sized to your gutter lip, shingle edge or ridge, and it all comes off in January leaving nothing behind. Original painted wood fascia on a 1912 bungalow or a Warm Springs Avenue Victorian is not something you punch holes in for a six-week light run. If we find old staple lines or rusted nails from a previous installer, we will show you where they are so you can get them sealed before the next wet spring.
Usually yes, if you go LED. Incandescent C9 pulls about seven watts a bulb, which is roughly six amps per 100 feet of roofline, and a 1920s North End or East End home often has one exterior outlet sharing a 15-amp circuit with half the front of the house. LED C9 draws under a watt a bulb, so a full roofline plus porch runs on a fraction of that. We put everything on GFCI-protected outdoor circuits with outdoor-rated cord and drip loops at each connection.
It is quoted per roofline, because linear footage alone does not predict the work. A single-story Bench ranch with an open front eave and a two-story Harris Ranch peak over a narrow side yard can measure the same and take very different time and equipment. What moves the number: peak height, roof pitch, gutter profile, number of separate runs, tree or column wraps, and access. The quote is free, there is no contract, and you get the price before anything goes up.
We take them down. Takedown is scheduled in January, and we aim for before the shaded eaves on north-facing North End, East End and foothills homes start building ice, because nobody should be working a ladder under an ice dam. Strands come down, clips come off, everything gets coiled and boxed by run so the next install is faster. If you want them stored labeled by roof section, tell us at the quote and we will pack them that way.
Call the office at (208) 453-6760 and we will get out to it. Most mid-season failures are a pulled connection at a corner, a tripped GFCI after a wet or thawing stretch, or one bad bulb taking a series section with it. Check the GFCI reset first — that alone solves a lot of December calls, and it costs you nothing. If it is not the outlet, it is on us to come back and fix the run we hung.
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