Five-acre zoning since 1957, horse-raising permitted, and a trail system measured in the tens or hundreds of miles depending on who is counting. On these properties the house driveway is the shortest thing that needs plowing.
Commercial and association work arranged through this page is performed by an independent snow and ice contractor under their own name, insurance and contract. This site makes the introduction and does no work itself.
Barrington Hills is the one village of the seven where snow removal routinely involves livestock. The village has zoned single-family lots at five acres since incorporation on July 5, 1957, permits farming and horse-raising, and holds a trail system that its comprehensive plan puts at about 210 miles and the Riding Club of Barrington Hills, founded in 1937, describes as nearly 70 miles of deeded and permissive easements. Listings describe fourteen-acre equestrian estates, six-stall barns and fenced pasture. On a property like that the house driveway is the shortest thing that needs plowing.
What actually has to be open after a storm: the barn lane, wide enough and cleared often enough for hay and feed deliveries; the paddock and pasture gates, both sides, so they swing; the trailer turnaround, which needs more radius than a car; the path from the house to the barn for a 6 a.m. feeding; and the manure and equipment areas that a plow cannot reach and a skid steer can. None of that is on a residential contract unless it is written in.
Many Barrington Hills farm properties open onto one of the village’s 24.5 miles of private road, which no public plow touches, or onto a Cook County road — Bateman, Brinker, Donlea, Old Sutton, Otis, Palatine or Penny — where the county plow leaves a windrow across a gravel apron and the culvert ends under it. The Barrington Countryside Fire Protection District asks residents to keep the fire grid sign and the mailbox clear of snow, which on a long frontage is a real item. And the village’s own contractor has been offered to private-road owners at village pricing since 2022, a first call for a lane shared by several farms. Private roads.
Barrington Hills sits in four counties — Cook, Lake, Kane and McHenry — and County Line Road west of the power lines is McHenry County’s. The county DOTs that cover the area both run living-snow-fence programs on rural roads with a history of drifting; in five-acre country with open fields, the lane that drifts shut is the one to talk about in October.
The property, the square footage or road length, the hours it has to be open, and whether salt is restricted. An operator who already runs commercial routes in these villages will quote it.
Call (224) 655-5981 Request a Quote
Barrington