unit property containing list?

[ard jonker]

Hello Listas,

Xtension her has a few pseudo units set properties in a series of other units.
The ON script for e..g. the kitchen motion detector is

set ToUnits to {"light kitchen", "fumehood", "boiler"}
setproperties(((thisUnit)), ToUnits, 1)

where setproperties is

on setproperties(FromUnit, TheUnits, theValue)
	if class of TheUnits is list then
		repeat with aUnit in TheUnits
			setproperties(FromUnit, aUnit, theValue)
		end repeat
	else
		Set Unit Property FromUnit in unit TheUnits to theValue
	end if
end setproperties

 
I noticed that the ON and OFF scripts need to  use the same ToUnits list.
Manually keeping the list equal in the ON and OFF script is error prone.
I'd rather store them once in a (text) unit property and then by command of something like
	set myList to ((Get unit Property "alist" from unit (thisUnit)) as list)
set them for the setproperties() script.
How does one store a {"item1","item2","item3"} list in a unit property?

I've tried the above and also
	set myList to (Get unit Property "alist" from unit (thisUnit))
but both get me the error message
 OSAError -1708: "alist" doesn’t understand the Get Unit Property message.

Any hints? Any much smarter ways of solving this?

Cheers,
Ard