HOA and communities
HOA and community entrance lighting the board will actually approve
The entrance is the one piece of an HOA that every resident and every prospective buyer drives past. Lighting it permanently costs the association one install and a few dollars a month in power, and it has passed every board we have worked with.
Why the entrance is the right first project
An HOA budget has to survive a board vote, and the entrance is the easiest lighting project to get a yes on. It is common property, so no individual owner is affected. It is the first thing a buyer sees on a showing. And it is the thing residents complain about when the seasonal wreaths and strings look tired by December 20.
In Cranberry Township, Wexford and the Murrysville corridor, entrances are typically a stone or brick monument with the community name, plantings, and sometimes a gatehouse or clubhouse behind it. All of that is lightable with the same system we put on homes, described at thraxel.com/permanent/.
What we light on a community entrance
The monument and the piers get uplighting from the landscape line, and the clubhouse or gatehouse gets track along the roofline. Path lights and bollards handle the walk from guest parking to the amenity building. The landscape side of that is covered at thraxel.com/landscape/, and all of it runs from one app.
Astronomical timers drive the schedule, so the entrance comes on at dusk in June and at dusk in December without anyone in the management office touching a switch.
- Monument sign face and cap, usually with a warm-white wash
- Stone or brick piers uplit from the bed
- Clubhouse roofline and porch
- Gatehouse eaves and canopy
- Walkway bollards and path lights toward a mailbox kiosk or pool
- Specimen trees flanking the drive
Handling the board and the architectural committee
Boards say yes to two things: something that looks like it belongs, and something that will not create a complaint. Color-matched aluminum track solves the first. It sits tight to the fascia and reads as trim in daylight. Individually addressable pixels solve the second, because a board can lock the entrance to warm white and only allow a holiday scene by vote.
We supply a render of the actual entrance within 48 hours of the consult, which is what most architectural committees want in the packet. We have never had a permanent system fail an HOA review. If your own community's rules are the question, the resident-side guide is at thraxel.com/blog/hoa-rules-permanent-lighting-western-pa/.
Common rules we see written into an approval: warm white only from January through October, holiday colors from Thanksgiving to January 6, no animation, and a shut-off time of 11 p.m. Every one of those is a schedule in the app.
Why the board should not buy seasonal strings again
Seasonal lighting on an entrance monument is usually a volunteer with a ladder or a landscaper's side job. It goes up late, part of it fails by mid-December, and the association pays twice for something nobody is proud of. Our seasonal program fixes the quality problem and covers in-season repair, but it still recurs every year.
A permanent system is one capital expense the board approves once, with 3 years on parts and 1 year on labor behind it. Power for an entrance runs a few dollars a month; each pixel draws about 0.3 watts.
The neighbor effect runs inside communities too. On 11 of our last 14 residential permanent installs, at least one neighbor on the same street booked within 18 months, and a lit entrance is what starts those conversations.
How to bring it to your board
Ask for the free on-site consult, get the render, and put the render and the warranty page at thraxel.com/warranty/ in the packet. We can attend the meeting or join by phone if the board wants to ask about track, power or the shut-off schedule.
Community and multi-property projects go through AJ at 240-730-4064. Single-clubhouse jobs go to Tyson at 724-859-4390, who handles the quote and the install himself. Either way the first step is a walk of the entrance at night, and it costs the association nothing.
