Lighting Installation in Standish, Maine

Standish Homes and What They Need

Standish, on the southeastern shore of Sebago Lake, is largely rural, and its housing shows it. Census estimates put the median home at 1980, with about half of homes built before 1980 and about 17 percent before 1940, much of the oldest in the villages of Standish Corner, Steep Falls, Sebago Lake Village and Richville. About 7 percent of homes are mobile or manufactured homes, a far higher share than in the towns closer to Portland. Most striking, nearly one in five housing units is held for seasonal or occasional use, largely camps and cottages along the Sebago Lake shore, Standish Neck and Watchic Lake. That mix means a lot of work on homes that were not built for year-round comfort: shallow or exposed plumbing, crawlspaces with no heat, electric baseboard added later, and manufactured homes whose furnaces and ductwork follow their own replacement rules.

Power, Storms and Wiring in Standish

Central Maine Power serves Standish over long rural lines through heavy tree cover, which makes the town vulnerable when ice or wind brings trees down, as it did across Cumberland County in the January 1998 ice storm and in the December 2023 storm, which left more than 56,000 county customers without power at its peak. Because most homes are on wells, losing power also means losing water, and seasonal properties left empty can freeze before anyone notices. Standish is also a long-commute town: census estimates show about 61 percent of commuters travel 30 minutes or more each way, a daily mileage where electric vehicles save the most on fuel. Adding a generator inlet, heat pumps and an EV charger to an older service usually starts with upgrading the electrical panel.

Getting to Know Standish