Frankfort Window Well Covers & Basement Windows
Frankfort designs for more rain than the region requires. The village's 100-year design rainfall standard is 8.36 inches, against a regional figure of 7.58 inches — a deliberately stricter local benchmark that came out of hard experience in the 1990s.
That experience is worth knowing. The 1994 flood generated more than 200 drainage complaints in the village. In July 1996 a 500-year event dropped seven to ten inches. Frankfort adopted its first comprehensive stormwater management ordinance in December 1994, a Stormwater Management Plan in 1997, and a Water Resources Management Plan in 2000. When the July 2010 disaster hit Illinois, FEMA's own case study records that Frankfort came through with just two properties reporting minimal damage.
Window wells are the part of that picture the village cannot engineer for you. Two-thirds of Frankfort homes were built in 1990 or later, and nearly a quarter date to the 1970s and 80s — a lot of wells, most of them open.
Frankfort's Flood Record And What Came Of It
FEMA published a case study on Frankfort titled around the idea that the village stays ahead of development for urban flood control, and the timeline in it is the clearest account of how the village got here. The 1994 flood produced over 200 drainage complaints. December 1994 brought the first comprehensive stormwater management ordinance. July 1996 delivered a 500-year event of seven to ten inches of rain.
The 1997 Stormwater Management Plan and the 2000 Water Resources Management Plan followed, and the village set its 100-year design rainfall at 8.36 inches rather than the regional 7.58 inches. In the July 2010 Illinois disaster declaration, Frankfort reported only two properties with minimal damage.
Frankfort sits in the Hickory Creek watershed — there is a USGS gage named for Hickory Creek at Frankfort — within the larger Des Plaines River basin. The village's public works department handles stormwater under EPA Phase II MS4 requirements and can be reached at (815) 469-2177.
The 2021 Code, And One Page That Is Out Of Date
Frankfort adopted the 2021 International Residential Code by Ordinance No. 3497, passed April 21, 2025, codified as Section 150.20 of the village's building regulations. If you find a village web page still listing the 2012 codes, it is stale — the 2021 editions are current.
Frankfort's amendments to the residential code are light where window wells are concerned. The only change to the emergency escape and rescue section is the deletion of exception 2 in R310.1. There is no Frankfort-specific window well dimension, ladder rule or cover requirement, which means the unamended 2021 IRC governs — and any dimension you are quoted should be attributed to that code, not to a village rule.
Two other amendments are worth knowing if you are finishing a basement here. The village adopted Appendix AF, radon control methods, and it amended the electrical code so that any 120-volt sump pump or ejector pump must have a single receptacle, not a duplex, on a separate non-GFCI circuit.
Permits And The Historic Downtown
Frankfort lists Windows and Doors, and Basement Remodel, among its named permit categories, each with its own submittal guide. The permits page states that a permit is required for remodeling existing structures, among other work. Call the Building Department at (815) 412-2465 to confirm the scope of what you are planning before you order materials.
The village's grading procedures, in effect since 1994 and amended in 2007, require drain tile to be in place before backfill is approved and require grading surveys to show all drainage swales and the direction of surface water flow on the property. That is the same logic a window well cover serves: control where water goes before it becomes a problem.
Frankfort spans two counties and two townships — Frankfort Township in Will County and Rich Township in Cook County — so confirm which county's stormwater rules apply to your lot. Historic Downtown Frankfort, platted in 1855 along what is now the Old Plank Road Trail, holds the village's oldest housing; about 3.5% of Frankfort homes predate 1940, and those are the ones where original wells are most likely to have failed.
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