Window and siding replacement in Edwardsville
What the code and the permit desk actually require here — and what the houses in Edwardsville tend to be hiding behind the siding.
- People
- 26,474
- Homes
- 10,609
- Size
- 20.0 square miles
- From downtown
- About 18 miles northeast
- ZIP codes
- 62025, 62026
- Founded or incorporated
- 1818
Incorporated in 1818, Edwardsville's Leclaire Historic District was a planned 19th-century industrial cooperative village later annexed into the city (1934), and Historic Saint Louis Street carries more than 50 homes dating from the mid-19th to early-20th century.
Edwardsville
The housing here is built out steadily through the 1970s-80s, with only modest growth (about 3%) since 2020.
What that vintage turns up
First-generation vinyl replacements went in across this whole period and they are now hitting both of the ages that matter at once: the frames are inside the twenty-to-forty-year band and the sealed glass units are well past the eight-to-twenty-year band. That combination produces the most common call we get on houses this age — fogged glass in a frame that is still perfectly sound. The honest first answer there is replacing the glass unit, not the window.
Hardboard and wood-composite lap siding from this era is the one with the paperwork. Masonite's hardboard covered product installed between 1980 and 1998 and reached roughly four million homeowners; Louisiana-Pacific's Inner-Seal siding had its own national settlement in the mid-1990s. Both claim programmes closed years ago, so the relevance now is diagnostic rather than financial: swelling, delamination and mushrooming along the bottom edges of the boards on a house of this age is a known product history, not necessarily the owner having neglected it.
The one to watch on a house of this age
Synthetic stucco applied before about 1997 is the high-risk cohort. Roughly ninety-five per cent of American applications were the face-sealed kind, which has no way to drain what gets past it, and the failures traced back overwhelmingly to flashing that was left out. Drainable systems are a different animal and are not the problem.
Lead paint. No, for anything built after 1978 — but confirm the build year before assuming it. 62.2% of the homes in Madison County were built before 1980, and on anything pre-1978 the EPA renovation rule applies to both of these trades. Window replacement is never exempt from it, at any size — a single window triggers it. A whole-house re-side clears the twenty square foot exterior threshold on the first wall. What the rule actually requires of a contractor.
Neighbourhoods
We work across Leclaire.
Historic districts
Edwardsville has 2: Leclaire Historic District and Saint Louis Street Historic District. This matters more for windows than for almost any other kind of work. A visible change to a window on a designated property can need preservation review before a building permit will issue, and in the strictest districts in this metro the material the window is made of is written into the ordinance. Which local rules bite, and which are only advisory.
The rules in Edwardsville
Siding replacement Permit required
Edwardsville does something almost no other city in this metro does: it strikes the residential permit exemptions wholesale. The amendment reads “Section R105.2 Work exempt from permit. Delete Buildings — exemptions 1-10.” Nothing on the model list survives, so siding needs a permit and so does nearly everything else.
Window replacement, same opening Permit required Enlarging or cutting an opening Permit required
Same deletion — there is no exemption left for window work of any kind.
Illinois sets this, not Edwardsville — and we are not going to print a number we have not read
Edwardsville adopts “the Energy Conservation Code, as published by the International Code Council with Illinois Amendments” and future editions as the State adopts them, so its energy requirement updates automatically with Springfield. Note that the city’s own web page still names the 2018 edition; the codified adoption is the rolling one, and state law would override a stale local edition anyway.
The unamended 2024 code figure for this climate zone is U-0.28. But Illinois publishes its own amendments to that code, it has amended that very table before, and we have not been able to open the current amendment document. So we are not going to state U-0.28 as the number enforced here. Buy to the ENERGY STAR figure below and the question does not arise; if you need the exact legal minimum, the Capital Development Board’s energy code office is on 217-685-4079.
For comparison, ENERGY STAR asks for U-0.25 or lower with an SHGC of 0.40 or lower everywhere in this metro, which is stricter than every code edition in force here. And the code only bites when the sash and the glazing are replaced together — replace the glass alone in an existing sash, or add a storm window over the top, and it does not apply.
Contractor registration Not published
No contractor registration, local licence, bond or insurance requirement appears on any reachable Edwardsville page (Building Permit Applications & Adopted Codes, Building Measures & Adopted Codes, Permits-Inspections index).
Local quirks
Edwardsville’s adopted climate design table prints a 114 mph wind speed and a 40-inch frost line — both a step above the Missouri side. Adopted codes are current 2021 I-Codes (IBC, IRC with amendments, IEBC, IFC, IMC, IFGC, IPMC) plus 2020 NEC - among the most current in this metro - yet the same page cites a 2018 state energy code.
Who to call
- Building dept
- 618-692-7535 (Public Works - building permits; Fire Dept plan review 618-692-7540)
- Official
- Not published. Any site printing a name here is guessing.
- Permits
- Department page
How Edwardsville compares with the rest of Madison County
Same county, same climate, same houses. Not the same rules.
| Place | Permit to re-side | Permit for a window | Window must meet |
|---|---|---|---|
| Edwardsville | Yes | Yes | — |
| Alton | Yes | Yes | — |
| Collinsville | Yes | Depends | — |
| Glen Carbon | Not published | Not published | — |
| Granite City | Depends | Depends | — |
Work we have done in Edwardsville
Not yet — Edwardsville is on our list rather than in our records. We will say so until that changes.
Where these facts came from
Everything on this page about Edwardsville was read off a published source. Where a question has no published answer we have said so rather than filling the gap.
Sources: library.municode.com · cityofedwardsville.com · cityofedwardsville.com · cityofedwardsville.com · library.municode.com · cdb.illinois.gov · cdb.illinois.gov · cdb.illinois.gov · regulations.justia.com · regulations.justia.com · law.justia.com · law.cornell.edu · energysense.uillinois.edu
Work coming up in Edwardsville?
We will tell you what the rules here are, including when they work in your favour.
Tell us about the house
We answer the phone. If we miss you, we call back.