Egress windows — and who should really be cutting your foundation

Everyone else ranking for this is paid when you say yes. Here's when you shouldn't.

• The basement is not going to be a sleeping room. A rec room, a gym or storage generally does not trigger the requirement. Check your local rules, but do not let a finished-basement quote include an egress window you were not required to have.
• There is an existing conforming exit you have not counted. A walkout door, or an existing window that already meets the opening requirements, may already satisfy it. Measure the actual clear opening on what you have before you buy an excavation.
• The basement already floods or has an unresolved water problem. Cutting a hole below grade in a wall that already lets water in is adding an entry point to a known problem. Solve the water first — and note that the contractor who solves it is very likely the same one who should cut the opening.
• The only place it can go is under a deck, a walkway or a drive. An egress opening has to be usable in an emergency and reachable from outside. If the only wall available puts the well somewhere nobody could climb out into, the project needs redesigning, not squeezing.
• You are hiring a window company for the whole job. Plenty do it well. But the difficult, expensive and risky parts are foundation cutting, excavation and drainage, which are waterproofing and foundation work. If the company you are talking to subcontracts all of that, you are paying a margin for coordination — ask who is actually doing it.

• Do you cut foundation walls yourselves, or do you subcontract it?

  The honest answer decides who you are really hiring. Basement waterproofing and foundation companies do this work daily; many window installers subcontract it. Neither is wrong, but you should know whose crew and whose insurance is on site.

• What does my building department require, and who confirms it?

  Get the required opening area, width, height and sill height in writing from a contractor who has spoken to your jurisdiction — not from a national figure. Amendments are local and this is the whole legal point of the project.

• Who pulls the permit and schedules the inspections?

  Structural alteration of a foundation is inspected work. If the contractor expects you to permit your own foundation cut, you have become the responsible party for someone else’s workmanship.

• How is the well drained, and where does that water go?

  The single most consequential detail below ground. You want a specific answer — gravel base tied into the footing drain, or a dedicated drain line to daylight or a sump. "It drains into the ground" is not an answer in clay soil.

• How is the opening supported, and what is going over it?

  The wall above the cut has to be carried. Ask what lintel or header is specified and, in block, whether the cores beside the opening are being filled.

• What is the actual net clear opening of the window you are quoting, fully open?

  Not the rough opening, not the frame size — the measured clear opening with the sash fully open. This is the number the inspector measures, and getting it wrong means buying the window twice.

• Who restores the landscaping, and is the backfill compacted?

  Excavation leaves a mess and settles for a year if the backfill is dumped rather than compacted. Settlement next to a foundation directs water toward it, which is the opposite of what you just paid for.

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