Window and siding replacement in New Gloucester

New Gloucester at a glance

People

5,766

Homes

2,256

Size

47.1 square miles

From downtown

About 21 miles north

ZIP codes

04260

Founded or incorporated

1774

A farming town settled by families from Gloucester, Massachusetts, and home to Sabbathday Lake Shaker Village, founded in 1783 and the last Shaker community still run by the Shakers themselves. The old town center is the New Gloucester Historic District.

The houses in New Gloucester

Of the homes in New Gloucester, 35% predate 1980 and 11% predate 1940; the median one dates from 1991. Detached single-family houses make up 70%; owners live in 83% of the occupied ones. A sizable share of homes here date from before 1980, the era the federal lead rule covers (homes built before 1978). What the lead rule requires of a contractor.

Owners here put the median home's value at about $357,100, and 63% of homes have three bedrooms or more — each bedroom needs an emergency escape opening under the egress rule.

Half the homes in New Gloucester were built before 1991, which makes its housing about 15 years newer than across Cumberland County as a whole (median 1976). Set against Cumberland County as a whole, owners live in 83% of occupied homes here against 70% county-wide, the median owner-estimated value is $357,100 here and $451,200 across the county and detached houses are 70% of the homes, above the county's 63%.

Rooms in the median home

5.5

Heated with gas / electricity

1% / 8%

Townhouses and other attached homes

2%

Homes in buildings of 2 to 4 units

19%

Homes in buildings of 5 or more units

0%

Mobile homes

8%

Source: U.S. Census Bureau, American Community Survey 2020–2024 5-year estimates (tables B25034, B25035, B25024, B25003, B25077, B25041, B25018 and B25040), read through Census Reporter. These are survey estimates, not a count of every house.

What that vintage turns up

The largest group of homes in New Gloucester, 33% of them, was built in the 1980s and 1990s, so that is the house described here.

Double-glazed vinyl or clad wood windows with a nailing fin, many now thirty or forty years old. The common failure is the seal between the panes: once it lets go the glass fogs between the layers and the gas fill is gone. When the frames are still square and dry, new sealed glass in the old frame is the cheaper repair; when the frames are cracked or the sills are soft, it is time for the whole unit.

The capes, colonials and raised ranches of the subdivisions that spread across the commuter towns, sided in vinyl or cedar clapboard over plywood or particle-board sheathing, with felt paper or an early house wrap behind it. The siding itself usually holds up; what to look at is what water has done at the corners, around the windows and under any deck ledger fastened through the siding.

Neighborhoods

We work across Upper Gloucester and Sabbathday Lake Shaker Village.

Historic districts

New Gloucester has 2 listed: New Gloucester Historic District and Shaker Village. A National Register listing on its own does not limit what you fit; a local district or landmark designation can, and in several towns here a change of siding material or window sash needs a certificate before the permit. Which towns' rules bind, and how.

Next door

New Gloucester shares a boundary with Gray, Raymond, Pownal, North Yarmouth, Poland, Auburn and Durham.

The rules in New Gloucester

Local quirks

In the Historic Resource Overlay District, the ordinance asks for original siding to be kept, repaired or replaced with the same material when possible, allows aluminum or vinyl as an acceptable alternative, and requires it to go on without irreversibly damaging or hiding the building's architectural features.

Who to call

Building dept

207-926-4126

Official

Eric Cobb, Code Enforcement Officer

Permits

Department page

How New Gloucester compares with its neighbors

All 25 Cumberland County places side by side →

Work we have done in New Gloucester

We have not logged a finished job in New Gloucester yet. When we do, it will be listed here with what was done — we would rather show nothing than a number you cannot check.

Common questions about New Gloucester

Where these facts came from

Sources: newgloucester.com · newgloucester.govoffice.com · newgloucester.com · newgloucester.com · newgloucester.com · newgloucester.com · newgloucestermecode.portal.iworq.net · maine.gov · maine.gov · legislature.maine.gov