St. Louis County, Missouri

Window and siding replacement in Manchester

What the code and the permit desk actually require here — and what the houses in Manchester tend to be hiding behind the siding.

People: 18,333
Homes: 7,617
Size: 5.03 square miles
From downtown: About 18 miles west
ZIP codes: 63011, 63021, 63088
Founded or incorporated: 1950

Manchester was named by an English settler after Manchester, England.

Manchester

Median home age is about 41 years. Manchester was incorporated as a village in 1950 and became a fourth-class city in 1959, so essentially its entire housing stock is postwar.

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. 69.2% of the homes in St. Louis 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.

The rules in Manchester

Siding replacement Conditional

St. Louis County lists re-siding among the “ordinary repairs or minor work for which a building permit will not be required.” The published item reads: “Siding: new or replaced exterior siding (vinyl, metal, wood, hardboard, etc.) including replacing with a different type of siding.” Adding exterior wall insulation under the new siding is exempt too — but insulating the inside face of the same wall is not. The exemption does not reach damage repair: a permit is required to repair a building damaged by termites, fire, wind, flood or earthquake, no matter how small the damage.

Window replacement, same opening Conditional Enlarging or cutting an opening Permit required

Replacing windows inside the existing rough openings is exempt from permit only if the new windows clear three published conditions: they are “the manufacturer’s largest standard size window that will fit within the existing opening” and match the old operating style or give an equal or greater opening area; they have “a maximum U-Factor of 0.34”; and they meet safety glazing where it applies. Glass-only replacement in an existing sash, and storm windows and storm doors, are exempt outright. A permit is required to enlarge or modify a rough opening — and also, unusually, to replace a window with a style that gives a smaller opening area than the one it replaces.

A replacement window here has to be U-0.34 or lower

St. Louis County adopted the 2015 I-codes by Ordinance 27,654, passed 18 December 2019 and effective 1 July 2020 (moved from 1 April 2020 because of Covid). It adopted no standalone energy code: one- and two-family dwellings are permitted to comply through Sections N1101 and N1102 of the International Residential Code instead. The number the County actually enforces on a replacement window is the one written into its own permit-exemption text — U-0.34.

0.34 is the County’s own published figure, taken from the condition it attaches to the window permit exemption rather than from an IECC table.

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 No

St. Louis County licenses mechanical, electrical and plumbing contractors and nothing else. There is no general contractor category and no siding or window category, so a siding or window company can pull a County permit with no County trade licence at all. Individual municipalities may still require their own business licence.

What the permit costs

Valuation-based. The fee comes off the residential table at SLCRO 1100.060, applied to the total estimated cost of work including labour and materials, plus a $47 permit processing fee.

Local quirks

Manchester issues no building permits of its own — the city says the function “is handled by other separate jurisdictions” and contracts the work to St. Louis County, whose code and exempt-work list govern. City Code Section 500.100 authorizes the City Administrator to 'enter into an agreement on behalf of the City for inspections and enforcement' with St. Louis County, which provides those services 'on behalf of the City of Manchester, Missouri.' Section 500.010 adopts 'the Building Code of St. Louis County as is set forth in St. Louis County Ordinance No. 27,654, with local amendments as adopted on April 1, 2020, effective July 1, 2020' (Manchester Ord. No. 20-2304, 10-5-2020; earlier Ord. Nos. 05-1609 and 10-1983). For commercial work the West County Fire District must also be contacted.

Who to call

St. Louis County: 314-615-5184 — Manchester has no building department of its own
Official: Director of Transportation and Public Works (Stephanie Leon Streeter, P.E.)
Permits: Department page

How Manchester compares with the rest of St. Louis County

Same county, same climate, same houses. Not the same rules.

Place	Permit to re-side	Permit for a window	Window must meet
Manchester	Depends	Depends	U-0.34
Affton	Depends	Depends	U-0.34
Ballwin	Yes	Yes	—
Brentwood	Yes	Not published	U-0.28
Chesterfield	Depends	Depends	U-0.34
Clayton	Yes	Yes	U-0.30
Creve Coeur	Not published	No	U-0.35
Des Peres	Yes	Yes	U-0.32
Ellisville	Not published	Not published	—
Eureka	Depends	Depends	—
Florissant	Depends	Yes	U-0.30
Kirkwood	Not published	Not published	U-0.30
Maryland Heights	Not published	Yes	U-0.35
Mehlville	Depends	Depends	U-0.34
Oakville	Depends	Depends	U-0.34
Richmond Heights	Not published	Not published	U-0.28
Town and Country	Depends	No	—
Unincorporated St. Louis County	Depends	Depends	U-0.34
University City	Depends	Yes	U-0.32
Webster Groves	Yes	Yes	U-0.35
Wildwood	Depends	Depends	U-0.34

Work we have done in Manchester

Nothing completed in Manchester so far. Rather than pad this out, we have left it blank until there is a real job to describe.

Where these facts came from

Everything on this page about Manchester was read off a published source. Where a question has no published answer we have said so rather than filling the gap.

Sources: stlouiscountymo.gov · stlouiscountymo.gov · library.municode.com · manchestermo.gov · manchestermo.gov · ecode360.com · ecode360.com · ecode360.com · ecode360.com

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