Solar, Heat Pumps & Roofing in Colchester, CT

Local Home Electrification

Solar & Heat Pump Installation in Colchester, New London County and All Communities

Colchester is the New London County town where Routes 2 and 11 meet, and that highway access made it the fastest growing town in Connecticut from 1980 to 2000. The population went from about 3,000 in 1950 to more than 15,500 in 2020, and about 42 percent of today's homes were built in the 1980s and 1990s, for a median year built of 1984. The historic Colchester Village and its Town Green anchor the center, with the villages of Westchester and North Westchester to the west.

Most of town still runs on delivered fuel and private wells. Census figures show about 60 percent of Colchester homes heat with fuel oil and another 16 percent with propane, against about 3 percent on utility gas, and the town's own plan only aims to explore gas service if opportunities arise. Public water from the Colchester Sewer and Water Commission serves about 4,000 people from groundwater wellfields, and the plan states that most residents get their drinking water from wells.

Outages here run long. The town's hazard mitigation plan records Tropical Storm Irene outages of seven to nine days in Colchester and October 2011 snowstorm outages of up to five days, and during Tropical Storm Isaias in 2020 about 99 percent of the town's Eversource customers lost power, with some homes out for about eight days. Most lines still run on poles, since underground wiring is required only in new subdivisions.

What Makes Colchester Projects Different

• The Colchester Historic District, a local district created in 1984, covers twenty-six properties around the Town Green, and a certificate of appropriateness is required for solar panels visible from the street, which the commission discourages except where placed out of view of the public way.
• Sewers serve the town center and its growth corridors and are treated at the Colchester-East Hampton Joint Facilities plant in East Hampton, while rural districts are designated sewer avoidance areas.
• Rural zoning calls for an 80,000 square foot minimum lot, with wetlands, floodplain, ledge over 200 square feet and slopes over 25 percent excluded from buildable area, which usually leaves room for ground mounts and generator pads on rural lots outside Colchester Village.
• The Lakeview Drive area at Pickerel Lake has a history of nuisance flooding in the town's hazard plan, and the Flood Hazard Overlay applies along mapped floodplain such as the Salmon River corridor.

Permits & Interconnection in Colchester

Colchester permits come from the Office of the Building Official in Town Hall at 127 Norwich Avenue, open weekdays 8:30 to 4:30 and Thursdays until 7. Inspections happen only Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday between noon and two and are scheduled by email, plan review takes two to six weeks, and fees are not refunded once a permit is issued. Septic review goes through the Chatham Health District sanitarian in the Land Use office, and Town Green historic district properties need a certificate of appropriateness that may be required even when a building permit is not.