Plumbing built for a "Town of Tomorrow"
The Streamwood area was known as Hoosier Grove and was farmed continuously from the 1830s through the 1950s; as late as 1950 the future Streamwood area, then part of Hanover Township, had only about 800 residents spread across those farms. That changed in 1956, when Maxon Construction and L H Builders erected 21 pre-assembled houses on concrete slabs at Bartlett and Schaumburg Roads — insulated wall, ceiling, roof, and framing sections shipped in from Indiana by the National Homes Corporation and marketed as a "Town of Tomorrow" aimed at returning veterans.
Slab construction changes where the pipes run
A plumbing system installed under a concrete slab, as Streamwood's original 1956 prefabricated houses were, routes supply and drain lines differently than a home with a basement or crawlspace; repairs or a repipe on one of those original slab houses usually mean cutting into the slab itself rather than working from below, a real difference from older Fox River towns built with basements.
Streamwood plumbing project paths
What Streamwood homeowners should mention
Let us know whether your house is one of the original 1956-57 slab-built homes near Bartlett and Schaumburg Roads — village records show the population grew from about 800 in 1950 to 4,821 by 1960 as that construction wave landed — since slab plumbing changes the access options available for a repair.
Incorporation-era infrastructure in Streamwood
The Village of Streamwood incorporated on February 9, 1957, just as that first wave of slab-built housing was going in, meaning municipal water and sewer infrastructure and the housing stock it serves largely arrived together — a different sequence than towns whose water systems had to catch up to a much older building stock.
For general Kane County water and soil sources, see local research and verification notes.