515-585-9079 Get a Quote Get a Quote
Adel, Iowa

Christmas Light Installation in Adel, Iowa

Adel is really two towns for a job like this. There is the old ring of homes around the brick square, and there is everything built south of Greene Street since 2000. Those are not the same roofline.

Why Adel Is Different

People Here Pay To Look At Decorated Houses

Most towns put up lights. Adel sells tickets to them.

The Holiday Home Tour

The Adel Partners Chamber runs a Holiday Home Tour that raises money for the Adel Historical Museum. It is a paid tour of decorated historic homes. People buy a ticket to see how the old houses near the square are dressed for December. The chamber's own listing shows it running in 2022. Treat it as a tradition, not a fixed date on a calendar.

We are not going to pretend that is a small thing. In most of the metro, a decorated house is something your neighbors glance at. In Adel it is an event with a ticket price attached, and the houses on that tour are the old ones. That is the clearest sign of local demand we found in any town we serve. It is the reason this page exists.

Adel Partners Chamber of Commerce, Holiday Home Tour for the Adel Historical Museum

Hometown Holiday Celebration

Adel lights its own tree on the first weekend of December. The tree lighting is on the Friday evening. There are reindeer photos. Carriage rides run through the old downtown the next day. So the whole town is standing outside, downtown, looking up, in the first week of December.

Adel Partners Chamber, Hometown Holiday Celebration

What that means for your date

If the town gathers downtown in the first week of December, a dark house that week is noticed. Installs run from mid-October, and the practical deadline in Adel is the week before Thanksgiving.

See the full booking calendar →

Want a real number for your Adel roofline? It takes no appointment.

Get my free satellite estimate
Adel Housing Stock

Adel Is Two Towns, And They Take Two Different Jobs

Most metro suburbs went up in one long run. Adel went up at both ends and skipped the middle.

11.6%

of Adel homes were built before 1920. Those are the ones near the square, and they are the ones on the home tour.

City of Adel comprehensive plan, housing chapter
44.9%

were built in 2000 or later. Almost all of that is south of downtown, on both sides of Highway 169.

City of Adel comprehensive plan, housing chapter
2018

is the single most common build year in Adel. The average build year is 1980 and the middle house is a 1993. Those three numbers do not describe one town.

City of Adel comprehensive plan, housing chapter

Reading that split honestly

The city says where each half sits, in its own plan. The older homes surround downtown, along Grove, Rapids, Court, Main and Prairie. The newer ones are in the subdivisions south of Greene Street, on either side of Highway 169. One sentence, and it is the whole shape of the town.

North of that line, we are working on houses that are a hundred years old or close to it. On a house that age, no run ends where a fixed store length ends, so every run gets measured and cut to the roofline it sits on. On those blocks that is not a sales line. It is the only way it looks right.

South of Greene Street it is a different job. That is where the homes built in 2000 or later are, on streets where everybody moved in at about the same time. Nobody there has forty years of habit about how their house gets lit.

The middle is where Adel is unusual. A typical metro suburb has a fat band of 1970s and 1990s houses holding the two ends together. Adel barely has one. Its average single-family home runs about 1,643 square feet with 3.25 bedrooms. So this is not a town of big houses at either end. The city's own figures put a number on the gap. A home built since 2000 averages more than two and a half times the value of one built in the 1920s or 1930s. Same town, same school district, two completely different front elevations.

Housing here is 96.8% single-family. That is high, and it matters, because almost every roof in town is a roof somebody owns and can decide about. There is very little of the attached and rented stock that fills the newer suburbs east of here.

Old house near the square or new build off 169, the estimate is free either way.

Get my free satellite estimate
The Square

The Brick Streets Are The Historic Landmark

Adel registered its roads, not only its buildings. That is genuinely rare.

What is listed, and what it covers

The Adel Public Square Historic District went on the National Register in December 2009. It runs about four blocks and takes in 45 resources. At the center of it is the Dallas County Courthouse at 801 Court Street, built in 1902.

Brick paving started at the courthouse square in 1892, and the brick streets themselves are part of what is listed. The town still makes brick. United Brick and Tile is still operating here.

National Register of Historic Places listing, December 2009

None of that lands on your house

This is the part other companies get wrong, so we will say it plainly. Adel's Courthouse Square design standards are commercial only, and they are voluntary. They bind an owner only if that owner takes the grant money that comes with them.

There is no residential design review in Adel. If you own a house on Grove or Court or Prairie, nobody has to approve what you hang on it in December. And no city in this metro has any ordinance at all on holiday decorations or when they come down. We looked. There isn't one.

What the square does change is the audience. Those four blocks are where the carriage rides go and where the home tour walks.

Send the address. Tate reads the roofline off satellite imagery and texts a ballpark back.

Get my free satellite estimate
Adel Homes

What We See Installing In Adel

Warm white C9 bulbs running the full gutter line and front peak of a two story house at dusk

Commercial-grade C9 bulbs, cut to fit the roofline they are on.

Eighteen associations, and no published rules

Adel has eighteen registered homeowner associations. That is a lot for a town this size, and it is the number people ask us about first.

Here is the honest limit on that. We can tell you how many there are, because that is on the public record. We cannot tell you what any one of them allows. We went looking for published covenants for all eighteen and did not find one. Anybody who tells you what your Adel HOA permits is guessing. If yours has a rule about lights, you will know it before we do, and we will work to whatever it says.

Clips attach to gutters, shingles and fascia without nails or screws wherever the roofline allows. Where a spot does not allow it, Tate agrees the method with you first, before anything goes up.

No appointment, nobody at your door, and no follow-up if you say no.

Get my free satellite estimate
Being Straight With You

When An Adel House Does Not Need Us

Two houses, two answers

Single story, one straight gutter run, and you like doing it. Then go do it. You will save real money and it will look fine, and if that is what your house is, Tate will tell you so.

A tall two-story front near the square, with a porch roof and dormers. That is the other end of it. Every run is a different length. The best lines are the ones you cannot reach off a step ladder. And Iowa in November is cold and wet the whole time you are up there. That is the job we exist for.

Either way the estimate costs nothing and there is no visit for that part. If the answer is that you should keep doing it yourself, Tate will say that.

Go deeper: what drives the price • what we install • when to book • doing it yourself • storage and takedown • what happens if a bulb goes out • get in touch

Nearby towns we work in: Waukee • Dallas Center

Get A Free Satellite Estimate For Your Adel Roofline

Send the address. Tate pulls satellite imagery of your roofline, measures the runs, counts the peaks, and texts a ballpark back. Usually the same day. No appointment, and nobody comes to the house for this part.

Get your Adel estimate

Two fields. Tate reads your roofline off satellite imagery and texts a ballpark back, usually the same day.

Required: texting is how Tate sends your estimate and confirms your install date.

The estimate is free and there is no obligation. Installs start mid-October and the calendar fills before Thanksgiving, so earlier is better.

Rather talk first? Call or text 515-585-9079

Get a Free Estimate Call