Egress Windows in Rich Township
Professional local service, clear communication and practical solutions for properties in Rich Township.
There is a moment in the work here that happens again and again, and it is a good moment. We pull up to a house in Rich Township, and the homeowner tells us they were quoted some long commute number for their drive to work, forty minutes, sometimes more, and they are finishing the basement for exactly that reason: if you are going to drive across the county and back every day, you want the house to feel like a retreat when you get home. The lower level becomes the family room, the guest room, the bedroom for the grown kids who come back, and every one of those rooms needs a real escape window.
This page is about egress windows in Rich Township: what the last township organized in the county looks like up close, how a place with three post office names in its history ended up with some of the quietest roads in Lapeer County, and the one thing about the township’s edge that changes how the work gets planned.
The Last Township Organized
Rich was the last township organized in Lapeer County, set off from Deerfield on the first day of December 1859, and it was named for Leighton Richards, an early settler and the first township clerk. The name has nothing to do with money; it has to do with a man the residents respected enough to name the whole place after. The first township meeting was held at the home of George Miles that following spring, with sixteen voters choosing their first supervisor, Simeon Crawford.
The settlement itself began in the mid-1850s, later than the rest of the county, because the township’s ground was the last to be worth the work. The first settlers came through unmarked trails in 1854 and 1855, and the first claim went to Thurston Wells, who entered forty acres in the northwest corner after a week-long walk from Marathon Township. The families that followed came from New England and eastern New York, drawn by the clay and gravelly loam soils that would grow grain and livestock, and the Richards brothers built the township’s first gristmill in 1856.
That late start gave Rich a housing stock that is the newest of the county’s old townships, which is a quiet advantage for the egress work. The oldest homes here are not the fieldstone pioneers of the southern townships; they are the frame farmhouses and block-walled homes of the late nineteenth century and the ranches of the twentieth, and they are easier to cut into and reinforce than the walls of a century earlier. The basements are still the classic rural kind, low, damp in the spring, and fitted with small windows set high on the wall, and they are still not bedrooms.
One habit shows up on the township’s older homes, and it is worth a warning: a lower level finished years ago with paneling and a hopper window, passed along as a finished basement without ever being a legal one. If you are buying or inheriting a Rich Township home, check the egress before you trust the bedroom count. It is a cheap inspection compared to the alternative, and it is exactly the kind of thing we are good at fixing.
The Township With Three Post Office Names
The township’s one real community is Silverwood, and its history is a small comedy of names. The post office was established in 1882 as Easy, which tells you something about the pace of life the settlers were going for, was renamed Rollo in 1890, and finally became Silverwood in 1892. The community that grew around it served the farms of the township, a country store, a school, and a grain elevator on the rail line, and it is still the address a good share of the township answers to.
The township’s population today is about fifteen hundred, spread across the section roads at one of the lowest densities in the county, under fifty people per square mile. There are no incorporated villages, no subdivisions to speak of, no downtown, and no main street; there are farmhouses, ranches, and newer acreage homes, each with room to breathe and room to drain a window well. That is the township in a sentence, and it is also the recipe for easy egress planning.
For the egress work, the low density is a gift. The township’s big lots mean the window well has room, the drain line has room, and the drain has room to pitch to daylight without crossing the well or the septic field. The homes run on private wells and septic systems, and the egress well and its drain have to respect the clearances set by the Lapeer County Health Department, which the roomy lots make simple. The planning is easy on those lots; it just has to happen before the digger does.
The ground is the classic Lapeer County till, clay loam and gravelly loam over the glacial plain, flat to gently rolling, with the low spots along the creeks rising in the spring. The water table here is more forgiving than in the lake country to the south, and a window well on that ground is a straightforward piece of engineering: gravel, a liner, and a drain pitched to daylight. The details are on our window well installation and basement waterproofing around egress windows pages.
The Commuter Township
The defining fact of life in Rich Township is the drive. The mean commute here runs over forty minutes, longer than almost anywhere in the county, and most of the working residents drive alone to jobs in manufacturing, retail, and the shops of the bigger towns to the south and east. The township sits at the top corner of Lapeer County, with Tuscola County on its north and west edges, and the roads that cross it lead somewhere else. That is the price of the quiet, and the township pays it happily.
The long commute shapes the egress work in a practical way. Homes here are where families spend their evenings, weekends, and holidays, which means the lower levels get finished for living, not storage, and finished lower levels with bedrooms bring the egress question straight to the foundation. The ranch home that was going to hold the furnace becomes the family room with a guest bedroom, and the guest bedroom needs a window that opens for real.
The newer homes on the township’s roads went in with full basements designed to be finished, and the best of them with egress planned at the pour, window wells set and drains run before the grade was backfilled. The homes that were not planned that way are where we do the retrofit, and the jobs follow the same careful sequence as everywhere: the wall is cut, the opening is reinforced with a steel lintel, the egress window goes in sized to the code, and the well is dug, lined, and drained, with a ladder where the depth calls for it and a cover that opens from the inside.
The walkout is the gift of the newer acreage lots, where the grade slopes to the back fields. A walkout door at grade counts as the egress for the rooms it reaches directly, no well, no ladder, no cover, just a door and a clear path to the yard. If the walkout does not reach every bedroom, each bedroom without the door still needs a proper egress window of its own. The details are on our basement bedroom egress page.
How the Work Goes in Rich
The job on a Rich Township home is a half-day to a full day of exterior work. The wall is cut and the opening reinforced, the egress window goes in sized to the code, and the well is dug, lined, and drained, with a ladder where the depth calls for it and a cover that opens from the inside. The township’s big lots mean the well placement and the drain run are the easy parts; the lintel and the sill level are where the care goes.
The permits come from Lapeer County, the work is inspected, and the seasons set the calendar. Spring brings the highest water and the fullest schedule, and fall is the sweet spot for getting the well dug before the ground freezes. If your Rich Township home has a lower level waiting for its bedrooms, the planning is free, the permit is quick, and the window will do more for that room than any paint ever will.
Rich Township Egress Window FAQ
My home is an older farmhouse or ranch. Can its basement window be made into egress?
Yes. The opening is enlarged, the wall is reinforced with a steel lintel, and a real egress window goes in. It is the most common egress job in the township.
Our basement is finished but has no egress. Does that count as a bedroom?
No. A finished lower level without a proper egress window is not a legal bedroom, and it will not pass an inspection or an appraisal. We can add the egress after the fact.
Our address says Silverwood or Mayville. Which office issues our permit?
The mailing address does not decide the office. We check whether your lot sits in Rich Township and pull the permit from Lapeer County, which governs the township.
We are near the Tuscola County line. Does that matter?
Only for the office that issues the permit. We confirm which county your lot is in before we plan, and build to the edition that office enforces.
How large does the window need to be?
The finished opening must meet the code’s clear width, height, and sill height, checked by Lapeer County. We size the window to the numbers before anything is cut.
What about the well and septic on our lot?
The egress well and its drain have to respect the well and septic clearances set by the Lapeer County Health Department. We check the layout before we dig.
Do we need a permit for egress work?
Yes, the permit comes from Lapeer County, and the finished work is inspected. We handle the permit as part of the job.
Our lower level will be the guest and family rooms. Does that matter?
It means the bedrooms need real egress, because family and guests sleep down there. A room with a dead-end window is not a bedroom anyone should sleep in.
The Bottom Line for Rich Homeowners
Rich Township is the last township organized in the county and the quietest corner of it, a place of long commutes and long evenings, of farms and acreage and a post office that has been Easy, Rollo, and Silverwood. Its homes are being finished now into real homes for the families who live there, and every bedroom below grade needs a real escape. The ground is forgiving here, and the work is clean.
If you are finishing the lower level of a Rich Township home, we will come out, look at the wall and the ground, confirm which office issues your permit, and lay out the plan before you spend a dollar. Confirm the requirements with the county, and then let us show you what a real egress window looks like in a township that was worth the walk to find.
Ready to Schedule Service?
Contact us now to discuss your project, review the next steps and schedule service.