Window and siding replacement in Washington
What the code and the permit desk actually require here — and what the houses in Washington tend to be hiding behind the siding.
- People
- 15,075
- Homes
- 6,600
- Size
- 9.66 square miles
- From downtown
- About 50 miles west
- ZIP codes
- 63090
- Founded or incorporated
- 1827
Settled during Spanish colonial rule as St. John Meyer's Settlement, later Washington Landing (1814); the largest city in Franklin County and sited on the south bank of the Missouri River.
Washington
Median house/condo built is 1981, but the town also carries an unusually large historic core: 445 buildings are listed on the National Register of Historic Places, including the Tibbe and Downtown Washington historic districts, so exterior work here spans both a large pre-1940 preservation-sensitive core and a later 20th-century majority.
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.
Historic districts
Washington has 2: Tibbe Historic District and Downtown Washington 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 Washington
Siding replacement Conditional
Washington publishes a dollar-and-scope threshold instead of a work-type exemption list. City Code Sec. 500.020: 'Residential remodel that does not involve structural, electrical or plumbing changes and/or cost less than one thousand dollars ($1,000.00) shall not require a building permit.' A re-siding job involves no structural, electrical or plumbing change, so on the first limb it reads as exempt; but the clause is drafted 'and/or,' which leaves it genuinely ambiguous whether both conditions must be met or either will do, and most whole-house re-siding jobs exceed $1,000. Re-siding is not named among exempt work anywhere - this threshold clause is the only exemption Washington publishes.
Window replacement, same opening Conditional Enlarging or cutting an opening Permit required
Same clause governs. Same-size insert replacement involves no structural, electrical or plumbing change and so may fall inside the Sec. 500.020 exemption, subject to the same 'and/or' ambiguity and the $1,000 figure - hence Conditional. Washington publishes no separate window or glass-replacement exemption.
There is no legal efficiency requirement for a window in Washington
City Code Sec. 500.010 Adoption of Various Building Codes lists exactly ten codes, all adopted by Ordinance No. 23-13877 (12-4-2023): International Residential Code 2021 as amended, International Property Maintenance Code 2021, International Existing Building Code 2021, International Building Code 2021, International Fire Code 2021, International Plumbing Code 2021, International Fuel Gas Code 2021, International Mechanical Code 2021, National Electrical Code 2020, International Swimming Pool and Spa Code 2021. No International Energy Conservation Code appears. Title V (Building and Construction) contains only Chapter 500 Building Code, Chapter 505 Streets and Sidewalks, Chapter 510 Poles and Wires and Chapter 515 Relocation Plan - there is no energy code chapter.
Which does not make it a good idea to buy the cheapest glass available. It means nobody is going to stop you. ENERGY STAR asks for U-0.25 or lower here and that is the number worth buying to, code or no code.
Contractor registration Not published
No contractor licensing or registration provision appears in Chapter 500 or anywhere in Title V. No business-licence-for-contractors requirement could be confirmed.
What the permit costs
Sec. 500.020 Permit Fee Structure: fees are 'Building gross area x (International Code Council) gross area modifier x (International Code Council) type of construction factor x permit fee multiplier,' with 'The Permit Fee Multiplier shall be set at three dollars ($3.00) per one thousand dollars ($1,000.00) of construction cost beginning on January 1, 2016.' Published minimums: minimum electric service permit $40.00, minimum plumbing permit $40.00, minimum HVAC permit $40.00, shed permit (120 sq ft or less) $50.00, demolition permit $50.00, mobile home setup permit $200.00. No siding- or window-specific fee and no minimum building permit fee is published.
Local quirks
Any contractor should get that reading in writing from the building department before relying on it. Washington also uses a two-stage fee formula (ICC gross area modifier x type-of-construction factor x multiplier) that is unusual among the Franklin County cities, and the multiplier has not been raised since 1-1-2016. Permitting is run through a SmartGov portal at ci-washington-mo.smartgovcommunity.com.
Who to call
- Building dept
- 636-390-1000
- Official
- Not published. Any site printing a name here is guessing.
- Permits
- Department page
Work we have done in Washington
None logged in Washington yet. When there is one it goes here, with the address block and what was actually done to it. An empty section is better than a number you cannot check.
Where these facts came from
Everything on this page about Washington was read off a published source. Where a question has no published answer we have said so rather than filling the gap.
Sources: ecode360.com · ecode360.com · ecode360.com · ecode360.com · ecode360.com · washmo.gov
Windows or siding in Washington?
Tell us the address. We look up what the city requires before we work out a price.
Tell us about the house
We answer the phone. If we miss you, we call back.