Elgin Window Well Covers & Basement Windows
Elgin has some of the oldest housing stock we work in anywhere in the Chicago metro. The Elgin Historic District alone holds 697 buildings developed between the 1840s and the 1920s, and the Spring-Douglas district adds another 496, most of them built between 1868 and 1913. Sears sold catalog kit homes into Elgin from 1908 through 1940.
A basement window in a house that old was never intended as an exit. The wells are often shallow, hand-set, and rusted through at the base, and the openings are usually well under the 5.7 square feet an escape window needs. That is a fixable problem — it just cannot be fixed with a stock cover off a shelf.
The Fox River and five creeks
Elgin was founded in 1835 at a place where the Fox River could be bridged, and the city still straddles it. But the Fox is not the only water here: FEMA's flood study for Kane County maps Poplar Creek, Otter Creek, Stony Creek, Sandy Creek and Sleepy Creek through Elgin, plus the Lord's Park Tributary. Tyler Creek drains about 40 square miles down the northwest side of town before joining the Fox.
On July 11 and 12, 2017, a gauge just south of Elgin recorded 7.31 inches of rain in two days. The National Weather Service's write-up of that storm is blunt about what happened next: roads were flooded and impassable, and basements across the area flooded.
If your home is near any of those creeks — or simply at the bottom of a block — an open window well is a collection basin pointed at your foundation. Covering it does not solve grading or gutters, but it removes the most direct path water has into a basement.
Permits and egress in Elgin
Window replacement requires a permit in Elgin. Permits go through Building & Development Services in the Community Development Department at 150 Dexter Court; the number is 847-931-6001, or dial 311 in the city.
Elgin maintains its own local amendments to the residential code, so confirm the current adopted edition and any Elgin-specific requirements with Community Development before you start a basement project. We will not guess at it for you — and we will not start work that will not pass.
The baseline egress requirements are an escape opening of at least 5.7 square feet, a well of at least 9 square feet with 36 inches of projection and width, a permanent ladder in any well deeper than 44 inches, and a cover that releases from inside with no key, tool or special knowledge.
All our covers:
Elgin Window Well Covers | Elgin Window Wells | Elgin Egress Window Wells | Elgin Well Covers | Elgin Basement Window Well Covers