Mundelein Window Well Covers & Basement Windows
Mundelein has had five names — Mechanics Grove, Holcomb, Rockefeller, Area, and since 1925 Mundelein. What has not changed is the shape of the place: a village of about 3,200 people in 1950 that passed 16,000 by 1970 and doubled again by 2000.
The median home here was built in 1985, and roughly 57% of the housing predates 1990. That is squarely the corrugated-steel window well era, and those wells are now somewhere between thirty-five and sixty years old — which is about when the bottom rusts out and the drainage stone underneath has long since silted in.
Six and three-quarter inches, and what the village did about it
On July 11 and 12, 2017, Mundelein recorded 6.75 inches of rain. The Western Slope neighborhood, west of Route 45 near Division Street, took the worst of it. Lake County's flood record around that event is long: 1986, when flooding did some $35 million of damage to 10,000 dwellings countywide, then 1987, 2004, and April 2013, when 3,200 Lake County properties were damaged.
In 2020 the village started a roughly $9 million flood-control project in response — about a mile of six-foot storm sewer under Division Street, culvert replacements at Route 45 and Seymour Avenue, and a detention pond built on the site of the old U.S. Music factory on Courtland Street.
Diamond Lake, 153 acres in the south of the village, drains toward the Des Plaines River. The village's Engineering Division will run a floodplain determination for your property free of charge at 847-949-3220, which is worth a call before you assume anything about your own lot.
Permits and egress in Mundelein
Mundelein's municipal code adopts the 2018 International Residential Code. The Building Department is at 847-949-3283, and it publishes a free Homeowner's Manual walking through the permit process — ask for a copy when you call.
We could not verify from public sources whether Mundelein requires a permit specifically for window replacement, for cutting an egress opening, or for finishing a basement — the village's permit documents are not publicly readable. We are not going to guess on your behalf. Call the Building Department and describe the actual work.
Under the 2018 IRC the requirements are 5.7 square feet of net clear opening, at least 24 inches of clear height and 20 inches of width, a sill no more than 44 inches above the floor, a well of at least 9 square feet with 36 inches of projection and width, a permanent ladder past 44 inches of depth, and a cover that opens from inside with no key, tool or special knowledge.
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Mundelein Window Well Covers | Mundelein Window Wells | Mundelein Egress Window Wells | Mundelein Well Covers | Mundelein Basement Window Well Covers