What one week of HOA Christmas light installs looks like in Clackamas

The property manager called in August. Fourteen townhome units off SE 82nd Avenue in Clackamas, built in the late 2000s, identical front elevations, shared parking court, and a board meeting in September where the holiday display vote could not wait until November.

HOA jobs are not fourteen separate residential installs. They are one design, one bulb spec, one attachment standard, and a schedule that respects people trying to leave for work at 7 AM.

The spec the board approved

We walked all fourteen units on a dry August afternoon and brought back a single proposal:

• Warm white C9 LED on every front roofline — 48 feet per unit, matched clip spacing at 12-inch intervals
• No tree wraps in the shared island beds (the HOA landscaper needed November access for fall cleanup)
• Garage-soffit accents on end units only, per the board’s request for corner emphasis
• Uniform timer schedule — 5 PM on, 11 PM off, all units on the same circuit logic so the street does not look like a patchwork

Color consistency is where cheap strands fail on HOA rows. We supply commercial-grade LED from the same production lot so unit 7 does not look cooler than unit 3.

How the install week broke down

We ran five days, three crew members, late October:

Day	Units	Notes
Mon	1–3	Gutter clips only — no penetration through coated aluminum
Tue	4–6	One unit needed a 6-foot ladder extension for a clipped downspout bracket
Wed	7–9	Parking court blocked 8–10 AM only; cones and signage per HOA rules
Thu	10–12	Wind gusts to 18 mph — we paused roofline work until afternoon
Fri	13–14	Final walk, timer checks, photo packet to property manager

Each unit took 2.5 to 3.5 hours. The variable was not the roofline — it was gutter condition. Three units had not been cleaned since spring. Clips on needle-packed troughs are a warranty problem waiting to happen, so we coordinated gutter cleaning on those three the week before lights.

What HOAs get wrong about timing

Residential homeowners can sometimes squeeze into a late-November hole. HOAs usually cannot — you need board approval, resident notices, and a uniform lit date for the community event calendar.

Our booking guide puts commercial and HOA accounts ahead of the residential rush for exactly this reason. This Clackamas association locked October install dates in August. By the time we finished the last unit on Friday, our November residential calendar was already into the second week.

Handoff to the property manager

Same-day deliverables per unit:

• Before/after photos of each roofline
• Clip map noting which gutters had been cleaned pre-install
• One mid-season service number for storm damage (a branch took a strand loose on unit 11 during a November wind event — fixed in 36 hours)
• January takedown dates pre-blocked for the second and third week, storage bins labeled by unit number

If you manage a Clackamas HOA, Happy Valley townhome row, or any multi-unit frontage that needs to match, August booking is not early — it is normal. Multi-unit and HOA work runs through our property manager services lane — same crew standards, bundled insurance documentation, and scheduling built for portfolios. Retail storefronts and parking-lot work is on our commercial services page.

503-995-1947 for a Christmas light quote — HOAs and property managers welcome; insurance documentation available on request. Written quote per unit or bundled — we scope it on the walk-around.