Basement Finishing & Remodeling in Highland Park, IL

The Building Division of the Department of Community Development, at 1150 Half Day Road, issues basement permits. You apply through the City's Civic Access Portal for a Residential Construction building permit, with every document filed at once, because incomplete submissions are turned away. For an interior remodel the City wants a signed property owner authorisation, a scope of work broken down by trade or room, a demolition calculation worksheet, existing and proposed floor plans, and copies of the electrician's and plumber's licences, including the plumber's 055 and letter of intent.

Highland Park has licensed general contractors since 1 March 1994, and any permit that touches structural elements needs a City licensed general contractor. Ask any contractor for that City licence before you sign. Removing or altering a bearing wall also needs a licensed design professional to review and seal the plans. A permit expires 12 months after issue and lapses if work has not started within 180 days. Inspections are requested in the portal by 2.30 pm for the next day, and someone has to be on site for each one.

The City's electrical amendments list Romex, BX and metal clad cable among the wiring methods that are not allowed, and current carrying conductors have to be copper. In a finished basement that means new circuits run in conduit. The plumbing amendments strike PEX, CPVC and polypropylene from the approved water distribution pipe, so supply lines for a basement bathroom or wet bar are planned in another approved material.

Alarm rules are local as well. Every smoke detector the code requires in a common area must be a combination smoke and carbon monoxide unit, and every mechanical room needs a heat detector interconnected so it sounds through the house. The City requires sprinklers in an existing house only when the work costs more than 75 percent of the structure's market value. A home battery, which the code calls an energy storage system, needs its own permit in a basement, plus a one hour fire rated room with a self closing door, a sprinkler and VOC detection.

Highland Park keeps storm and sanitary laterals separate, and its wastewater goes to the North Shore Water Reclamation District plant on Clavey Road. The City says it sits at the downstream end of that system, and that once its sanitary sewers reach capacity, water can back up into basements. Any addition or renovation of 50 square feet or more brings a Public Works dye test of your downspouts and sump pump drains, and the permit depends on the result.

The City's voluntary sewer lateral cost share programme helps owners of single family homes line or replace a private sanitary lateral, or install a backflow device or an overhead sewer. A building permit is required, and City staff first inspect for storm laterals tied into the sanitary line, which the owner must disconnect at their own cost. That is plumbing work, and it should be finished before we frame. We will not frame over a floor that still gets wet.

A basement bedroom needs an egress window, and Highland Park adds a rule about the well. Any window or area well deeper than 30 inches must have an approved cover or a guardrail, even when it is not an escape opening, unless a terrace 36 inches or wider sits less than 30 inches below its top edge. On a ravine lot, the Steep Slope Zone rules bar earth moving inside the zone and call for a temporary fence along its edge during any construction on a lot that abuts it.

Depending on where you live, your stormwater heads for the Skokie River, the Middle Fork or Lake Michigan. The City says its floodplain areas lie mainly along those two rivers, adopts its own floodplain at a higher threshold than FEMA's, and shows both layers on its interactive map. Its 1999 Westside plan named basement flooding in the Sherwood area as a problem to solve.