Lighting Installation in Cumberland, Maine

Cumberland Homes and What They Need

Cumberland's housing splits between an old village core and decades of newer subdivisions. Census estimates put the median home at 1984, with about 15 percent built before 1940, in Cumberland Center, on the Foreside and on the older farms of West Cumberland, and another 15 percent built since 2010. Roughly 40 percent went up between 1980 and 2009, the era of the town's many subdivision neighborhoods. About 82 percent of homes are single-family detached. The older farmhouses often have fieldstone foundations, damp basements, knob-and-tube or cloth-sheathed wiring and heating added in stages, while 1990s and 2000s houses are reaching the age when original boilers, furnaces and water heaters come due. Where a house has radiant floor heating, its boiler and mixing controls need periodic attention.

Power, Storms and Wiring in Cumberland

Central Maine Power serves Cumberland, and the town has a documented storm history. In the January 1998 ice storm Cumberland was named among the towns that bore the brunt of the damage, and the December 2023 storm left more than 56,000 Cumberland County customers without power at its peak. Wooded lots and long driveways in West Cumberland mean restoration can take longer than in the village. Census estimates show about a quarter of Cumberland workers now work from home and roughly a third of commuters travel 30 minutes or more, a pattern that suits electric vehicles charged overnight. The limiting factor is often the panel: many houses from the 1980s and 1990s were built with 100 or 150 amp service that now has to carry heat pumps, an EV charger and possibly a generator inlet, and a 200 amp panel upgrade is often the step that makes all three possible.

Getting to Know Cumberland