Basement windows - changing to egress

[rubytue]

For reasons *waves hands* remodeling our finished basement begun earlier than planned. It’s been finished for roughly 30-50 years (various levels of finishing over this time, it’s been a bit like unpeeling a time capsule). Anyway…

has anyone taken your typical small basement window that may have a small window well and changed it to egress? I want to move the “bedroom” from the side with the exterior door to a side with three of the ceiling-level basement windows. Legally, I know to keep calling it a bedroom, I need to have someone put in egress windows. Looking for ballparks on cost, level of effort, and type of company. We do almost everything ourself (H is in trades and a step up from “handy”), but I draw a line at letting him cut into the foundation (trust, he will try to tell me he can DIY this).

This is only slightly near term. Maybe? Like, we don’t care for our use, but we really should do it given the other changes we are making. 

[boiler717]

I have not done this but in our area it’s very common to have a basement “den/office” that is a bedroom without a window. Unless I had long-term guests who really needed the natural light, it probably wouldn’t be worth it to add the window here.

[boiler717]

As for costs, adding windows was surprisingly inexpensive when we’ve done it before. Less than $1k for the labor + cost of window. But that was pre-pandemic pricing and not egress.

[rubytue]

Feb 2, 2022 17:15:34 GMT -5 boiler717 said:

I have not done this but in our area it’s very common to have a basement “den/office” that is a bedroom without a window. Unless I had long-term guests who really needed the natural light, it probably wouldn’t be worth it to add the window here.

Yeah. Realistically, they won’t be changed any time soon and it’ll just be a finished room with high windows. I’m just weird about wanting to follow code, or at least know what I need to do to meet it and how far off I am. And to build out for the long range. Like, even though we are turning half the basement into a workshop, we are wiring it so we *could* put a fridge and range in there, and it could be a full apartment.

When he bought it, there was a room on one end of the basement that met code to be called a bedroom. Because it had the door. Who the hell wants an exterior door in their bedroom? Especially with creep walk down stairs to it? It was a horror movie setting 😂😂

I think this is really that H has started working on it and put me on my “design” task. So, I’m designing.

[samanthamkm]

I had a construction company "quote" me $8k. That was on an unfinished basement with one of those small basement windows in place. I use quote loosely because it wasn't in writing. I live in Northern Indiana.

[rubytue]

Feb 2, 2022 20:01:07 GMT -5 samanthamkm said:

I had a construction company "quote" me $8k. That was on an unfinished basement with one of those small basement windows in place. I use quote loosely because it wasn't in writing. I live in Northern Indiana.

Thanks! And *grumble* My wild ass guess was $2-3k each. *sigh*

[SusanBAnthony]

We have a bunch of companies that seems to do just basement egress windows. They go for 2-3k, so not bad.

I will say they use really cheap windows. You kind of need vinyl for a basement window because it's going to be damp all the time. But they use the cheapest of the cheap. Just something to be aware of, it probably doesn't change anything.

[dancingirl21]

My DH is a GC. He had his trades finish our basement. We looked into the egress window because we added a bedroom/bathroom and my DH is very big on doing things by code. We had four window companies come out and tell us it's very expensive and the windows are hard to get. And to get vinyl they had to come from Europe (we questioned that a bit but never got the full story). We do, however, have a pretty big window in the basement, just not in the bedroom. So DH was fine with that being a window that we could slide and get out of the window well in case of an emergency.

[bittybomb]

Friends paid $10k in 2019 to convert a regular basement window to an egress window. They needed to do it because they were selling and needed a permit for their finished basement. Around here no egress window, no permit.

[bhnumbers]

We did this as part of our big renovation a few years ago. I don't know what the specific cost for just that was because it was rolled into the rest of the construction.

But it was kind of a pain in the ass. There are a ton of regulations here (Northern VA) and one of them is that you have to be able to open the window enough to get out and then there needs to be some kind of ladder or steps to get out of the window well. Because we hired the worst contractors on the face of the planet, this (along with so many other things) was a complete fuck up. It was one of the last things they did (badly) before we finally had to fire them. So I have *feelings* about this, lol.

The building plans called for the window well to be made of poured concrete and they were trying to finish it with stacked stones like you use in landscaping. The people we hired to finish it properly said that, no question, it would have caved in within a year or just after one big rain storm because they just stacked these brick things right up against the dirt.

Also, I can't remember the exact details on this, but they basically didn't loop the drain for it into our drainage pipe for the yard, so water leaked in that wall of the basement

However, we found wonderful, talented, and delightful people to finish the job and they did it properly, including hiring a welder to put a proper little fence around the window well and building a nice, little escape ladder, too.

Despite all that, I'm really glad we did it because now that room counts as a actual bedroom and, of course, it's safer for whoever sleeps there, but also, it lets in a ton more light in that room.

I have photos around here somewhere, I'll see if i can find them and add them in.

[bhnumbers]

Before and after:


And here is the outside:

[shamrockshake]

I just did this last week. HCL (Philly suburbs) it was $5500. We had multiple quotes all about that same range. This was for a larger 4ft window. Would have been $500 less for a standard egres size

[my4girls]

[icedcoffee]

I think isabel recently did this.

[isabel]

I’m in denver. Our original window and new egress look pretty close to what bhnumbers posted. It was about $7k and the work was done over two days. They had to do engineering and get the city to sign off on that, then they started the work. I am very pleased with the results and our basement is so much safer now that there is a secondary exit point. Doing this had the added benefit of giving us a conforming 5th bedroom too.

ETA: I think actual final cost was $6700. We paid about 500 more for a larger window that full opens like a door. It can also be tilted open from the top to let air in without being fully open. The price included the well, ladder, and a metal cover, plus all city permitting and what not.

[stemmie]

A friend did this about 18 months ago in Philadelphia. She added 2 egress windows to a second kitchen she installed in her basement- she bakes. Her windows are larger and open like doors. She has an integrated set of steps in the bulkheads that hold the soil in place to keep it from backfilling the excavated area. She paid about $15K.