Bolingbrook Window Well Covers & Basement Windows
Bolingbrook is the biggest town we serve and one of the most consistent. Nearly 39% of its 24,498 housing units were built between 1970 and 1989 and another 43% between 1990 and 2009 — about 82% of the village in two contiguous waves, with a median year built of 1989.
That uniformity is useful. Bolingbrook homes tend to have similar foundations, similar basement depths and similar window wells, which means we know what we are walking into before we get there. What varies is how much sun, snow and neglect a given well has taken in the intervening decades.
The village began in 1960, when Dover Construction laid out the Bolingbrook Subdivision, with model homes on Rocklyn Court in 1961. It incorporated on October 6, 1965 with about 5,300 residents in 1,200 homes. Today it is home to roughly 74,000 people.
How Bolingbrook Got Built
Bolingbrook's development history is unusually well documented, and it maps directly onto window well vintages. Dover Construction laid out the Bolingbrook Subdivision in 1960, with model homes on Rocklyn Court the following year. Beaconridge followed in the first wave. The 1950s subdivisions Westbury and Colonial Village sat on either side of Route 53.
The second wave arrived in 1971, when the first homes went up in Indian Oaks, Winston Woods, Ivanhoe, Cherrywood and Cinnamon Creek. Population went from 7,651 in 1970 to 37,261 in 1980 — a 387% increase, partly through annexation — then to 40,843 in 1990 and 73,922 in 2020.
If your home is in one of the early subdivisions, your wells are original and more than fifty years old. If it is in the 1990s and 2000s build-out, the wells are newer and deeper, and an open one catches more water per storm than an old shallow one ever did.
Water In Bolingbrook
Bolingbrook sits in the heart of the Gateway Wetlands, which begin in Downers Grove and end just north of the Joliet city limits. The village runs a stormwater and MS4 program and maintains a public intake for reporting a drainage or flooding concern.
The regional reference event is September 12–15, 2008, when the remnants of Hurricane Ike produced 6.12 to 6.49 inches in the Downers Grove and Lisle area and pushed the DuPage River to record or near-record levels, with roughly $100 million in damage across the region and widespread basement flooding.
We will not attach a Bolingbrook-specific flood date to that, because we have not verified one. What we can say is that a 25-square-mile village built largely between 1970 and 2009 has tens of thousands of window wells in it, and the ones without covers are collecting every inch that falls.
Code And Permits In Bolingbrook
Bolingbrook enforces the 2018 International Residential Code along with the 2018 building, mechanical and fuel gas codes, the 2017 National Electrical Code, and the current Illinois plumbing, energy conservation and accessibility codes. Chapter 10 of the municipal code is the village's building chapter.
Under the 2018 IRC, a basement sleeping room needs an emergency escape and rescue opening with at least 5.7 square feet of net clear opening, a minimum clear height of 24 inches, a minimum clear width of 20 inches, and a sill no more than 44 inches above the floor. The well outside it needs at least 9 square feet with a minimum projection and width of 36 inches, and a permanently affixed ladder or steps if it is deeper than 44 inches.
A cover over that opening has to be releasable from inside without a key, a tool or special knowledge, and without more force than the window itself requires. The village states that permits are required for new construction, renovations, additions, alterations and repairs. Call the Building Division at (630) 226-8470, weekdays 8:30 a.m. to 5:00 p.m., to confirm what your project needs.
Bolingbrook spans five townships — DuPage, Wheatland, Plainfield, Lisle and Downers Grove — and parts of the village fall in DuPage County rather than Will, so confirm which county's stormwater rules apply to your address.
All our covers:
Bolingbrook Window Well Covers | Bolingbrook Window Wells | Bolingbrook Egress Window Wells | Bolingbrook Well Covers | Bolingbrook Basement Window Well Covers