Shorewood Window Well Covers & Basement Windows
Shorewood calls itself the Jewel on the River, and the DuPage River is the reason. The village incorporated in 1957 with 499 residents and has roughly doubled again since 2000. The median home here was built in 2002, and about 72% of the housing went up in 1990 or later — barely one home in seventy predates 1940.
Almost every window well in the village is original to its house. That is good news for sizing: they were set to a modern code and they generally meet it. It is bad news for the covers, which are mostly the builder-grade plastic that shipped with the house and have now taken twenty-odd Illinois winters.
The river gauge changed scale in 2023
The DuPage River gauge at Shorewood is a named National Weather Service forecast point, and it is worth knowing that its numbers moved. After the Hammel Woods Dam was removed in late 2021, the gauge was re-datumed effective January 31, 2023, and the flood categories were reset: action stage 15.0 feet, minor flooding at 15.5, moderate at 17.5, major at 19.5. If you are comparing a reading today against a number you remember from a few years ago, they are not on the same scale.
The river does come over its banks here. In February 2018 it flooded at Seil Road and at the US-52 and River Road intersection, and USGS mapped flood inundation across the Plainfield-to-Shorewood reach after the 2013 event. A flood warning went out for the DuPage in Will County as recently as August 2026.
For most homes the risk is not the river, though. It is a brittle cover that finally cracks under a wet snow load, dropping the whole winter's worth of melt into the well at once.
Permits and egress in Shorewood
Shorewood has adopted the 2018 International Residential Code and — we checked the ordinance — makes no local changes to the emergency escape and rescue requirements. The model code applies as written: 5.7 square feet of net clear opening (5 square feet at grade level), 24 inches of clear height, 20 inches of clear width, a sill no more than 44 inches above the floor, and a well of at least 9 square feet with 36 inches of projection.
Permits are required for window replacement and for basement remodeling, both handled under the village's residential remodeling application. Window wells are not a separate permit category. The Building Department can be reached at permits@shorewoodil.gov or 815-725-2150.
One more thing worth knowing if you are finishing a basement here: Shorewood has also adopted the Illinois Radon Resistant Construction Act, which affects how below-grade space gets built out.
All our covers:
Shorewood Window Well Covers | Shorewood Window Wells | Shorewood Egress Window Wells | Shorewood Well Covers | Shorewood Basement Window Well Covers