Carport Motion-Sensor Lighting for a Vancouver, WA Manufactured-Home Community

We added motion-sensor carport lights across Totem Pole Estates, a manufactured-home community in Vancouver, WA. The property manager wanted lights at the carports so residents weren’t walking up to a dark carport at night.

The job was 26 carports. Eight units already had working carport lights, so we left those alone. It was the same clean install, done 26 times.

Why we ran the conduit on the surface

These are open carports, not finished walls. There’s no wall to fish wire through, and cutting into the soffit on every unit would be slow and messy. So the wiring runs in EMT conduit mounted along the beams.

That does a few things:

• Protects the wire from weather and the occasional bumped ladder
• Keeps every run straight and neat along the carport instead of stapled cable
• Makes the next service call easy, because you can see the whole run

With this many carports that look the same, a neat run also looks the same from one unit to the next, which the owner cares about.

Why each light runs off its own unit

Instead of running a new property-wide circuit, we powered each carport light from its own unit. That keeps it simple:

1. No new feeders or shared meters to sort out
2. Each light is tied to the unit it serves
3. One LED motion light uses almost nothing compared to what the unit’s service can handle

Why motion-sensor lights

A carport light that’s on all night burns power nobody’s watching. Motion-sensor LED lights fix that:

• They come on when someone pulls in or walks up, then shut off on their own
• They barely use any power, so 26 of them don’t add up to much
• Residents get light when they need it

We do this kind of repeat commercial lighting installation for property managers and owners: one setup, done the same way across the whole property. If you manage rentals, carports or a community and want outdoor lighting done the same on every unit, we can help. Our page for property managers and contractors covers how we handle multi-unit jobs.

Managing a property in Vancouver that needs lighting or electrical work done across a lot of units? Call 360-828-7143 or send over the scope for a free estimate.