Aurora Window Well Covers & Basement Windows
Aurora is one of only three Illinois cities that span four counties — Kane, DuPage, Kendall and Will — and the housing runs the full range that implies. The Near Eastside Historic District is mostly 1850s to 1920s construction, the oldest cited house dating to 1854. The West Side Historic District takes in 98 buildings from the 1860s through the early 1900s. The city also holds more than fifty Sears catalog homes and seven Lustron steel prefabs.
Basements of that vintage were dug for coal chutes and furnaces, not bedrooms. When a homeowner here finishes one, the window well is almost always the part that has to change.
The rainfall record nobody wanted
On July 17 and 18, 1996, the National Weather Service cooperative gauge in Aurora recorded 16.94 inches of rain in 24 hours. That is still the heaviest 24-hour rainfall ever measured in Illinois. FEMA put the damage at $600 to $700 million with more than 35,000 residences flooded. The city's own flood records list that storm as the Blackberry Creek Flood, alongside an April 2013 rain event around Phillips Park.
The Fox River divides Aurora, but it is far from the only water here. The city's stormwater program tracks Indian Creek, Blackberry Creek, Waubonsie Creek and the West Branch of the DuPage River. About 93% of the city's drainage — some 43 square miles — heads for the Fox.
Aurora participates in the National Flood Insurance Program and holds a Class 7 rating in FEMA's Community Rating System, which lowers flood insurance premiums for residents. What a cover does is narrower but immediate: it stops the well itself from filling and pushing water past the window frame.
Permits and egress in Aurora
Aurora draws a useful line. A same-size window replacement does not require a permit. Cutting a new opening for an egress window is a structural change, and structural changes and interior remodels do require one — which is the category most basement projects fall into.
Permits are handled by the Division of Building and Permits at 77 S. Broadway, first floor; the number is (630) 256-3130. Call them before you start a basement project, and confirm the current adopted code edition with them directly — Aurora's published ordinances do not state a current International Residential Code year clearly enough for us to quote one here.
What does not change is what an egress well has to do: at least 9 square feet of area with 36 inches of projection and width, a permanent ladder or steps in any well deeper than 44 inches, and a cover that releases from inside with no key, tool or special knowledge.
All our covers:
Aurora Window Well Covers | Aurora Window Wells | Aurora Egress Window Wells | Aurora Well Covers | Aurora Basement Window Well Covers