Window and siding replacement in South Portland

South Portland at a glance

People

26,930

Homes

12,782

Size

12.0 square miles

From downtown

About 2 miles southwest

ZIP codes

04106, 04116

Founded or incorporated

1895

A working-waterfront city on Portland Harbor that broke away from Cape Elizabeth as a town in 1895 and became a city in 1898. Ferry Village is its oldest neighborhood, and its World War II shipyards built 236 Liberty ships, more than 10 percent of all built in the war.

The houses in South Portland

In South Portland, 61% of homes went up before 1980 and 25% before 1940; the median one dates from 1968. 53% are detached single-family houses, and owners live in 58% of the occupied ones. With most of the housing older than 1980, the federal lead rule is likely on most window and siding jobs here. What the lead rule requires of a contractor.

Owners here put the median home's value at about $441,200, and 47% of homes have three bedrooms or more — each bedroom needs an emergency escape opening under the egress rule.

Half the homes in South Portland were built before 1968, which makes its housing about 8 years older than across Cumberland County as a whole (median 1976). Set against Cumberland County as a whole, owners live in 58% of occupied homes here against 70% county-wide, the median owner-estimated value is $441,200 here and $451,200 across the county and detached houses are 53% of the homes, below the county's 63%.

Rooms in the median home

5.3

Heated with gas / electricity

34% / 18%

Townhouses and other attached homes

5%

Homes in buildings of 2 to 4 units

15%

Homes in buildings of 5 or more units

26%

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.

Redbank and Brick Hill on the west side saw new affordable and market-rate housing from 2006 on former Long Creek Youth Development Center land.

What that vintage turns up

The largest group of homes in South Portland, 25% of them, was built before 1940, so that is the house described here.

The originals are wood double-hung sashes on cords and weights: small panes on the capes and farmhouses, two-over-two or one-over-one on the Victorian, Italianate and Greek Revival houses of the shipbuilding and mill towns. Many now sit behind an aluminum storm window added decades later. The sash wood is usually old-growth and sound; the putty, the sill paint and the cords are what give out. A tuned-up sash with a tight storm in front of it is a real alternative to replacement on these houses, and inside a local historic district it is often the one the review expects.

Painted wood clapboards on the street walls, and cedar shingles on the sides, the ells and every surface of the Shingle-style summer houses along the coast, all nailed straight to board sheathing. In the cities a good share of these are two- and three-family houses. Plenty were later wrapped in asbestos-cement shingles, aluminum or vinyl to stop the painting; underneath is either clapboard worth restoring or soft bottom courses where winter snow banked against the wall for decades.

Neighborhoods

We work across Ferry Village, Knightville, Willard Beach, Pleasantdale, Ligonia, Thornton Heights, Cash Corner, Meetinghouse Hill, South Portland Heights, Redbank, Brick Hill and Cushing's Point.

Historic districts

South Portland has 1 listed: State Reform School Historic District. 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

South Portland shares a boundary with Portland, Cape Elizabeth, Scarborough, Westbrook and Casco Bay.

The rules in South Portland

What the permit costs

Construction work is charged $100 plus $15 per $1,000 of cost, every permit carries a $50 minimum, and a permit applied for after the work has started costs three times as much, up to $1,000 more (master fee schedule).

Local quirks

A building permit for exterior work on a South Portland home built in 1940 or earlier, or on a property in the city's inventory of historic resources, can be held up to 90 days while the South Portland Historical Society and the city's Arts and Historic Preservation Committee review it; the Building Inspector can shorten or waive the wait for significant financial hardship. The city's building codes page lists the 2021 energy code, which the city adopted as its stretch energy code (City Code section 5-169A).

Who to call

Building dept

207-767-7603

Official

Nicholaus Richard, Code Enforcement Director & CEO

Permits

Department page

How South Portland compares with its neighbors

All 25 Cumberland County places side by side →

Work we have done in South Portland

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

Common questions about South Portland

Where these facts came from

Sources: southportland.gov · southportland.gov · southportland.gov · southportland.gov · southportland.gov · southportland.gov · southportland.gov · southportland.gov · southportland.gov · maine.gov · legislature.maine.gov