Egress Window Installation in Farmington Hills

A casement is hinged on one side and cranks outward, so the whole sash clears the opening. That makes it the smallest frame that can meet egress size. It also has to open from inside without keys, tools or special knowledge, which a crank does. The catch is outside: the sash swings into the well, so the well has to be deep enough from the wall for it to open fully and still leave room to climb out.

A slider moves one sash along a track and nothing swings into the well. The code measures the clear opening with the window in normal use, so only the open half counts. To reach 5.7 square feet and 20 inches of clear width, a slider needs a noticeably wider frame than a casement, and a wider cut in the wall. Sliders make sense under a deck or porch, which code allows if the window opens fully and there's a path at least 36 inches high to the yard.

On a poured wall the opening is cut with a wet diamond saw from both sides, and the block of concrete is broken out and removed. The outside has to be dug first, down below the new sill, where the well will go. HomeGuide notes that cutting poured concrete usually takes longer and costs more than opening a block wall. The cut edges are then sealed and a buck (frame) set in before the window, and the joint at the bottom of the opening gets the same attention as any other place water can enter the wall.

A block wall needs more than a cut. The residential code requires masonry over an opening to sit on a steel lintel, a reinforced concrete or masonry lintel, or an arch designed for the load. The cut cores on each side of the opening are often filled solid so the window has something to fasten to and the lintel has something to bear on. Block walls in older houses sometimes already show stair-step or horizontal cracks; those should be checked before anyone adds an opening, because a bowing basement wall needs its own repair first.

Many older basement windows are small hoppers set high on the wall. Enlarging one means cutting down below it to lower the sill to 44 inches or less and, often, cutting wider. It reuses the existing header area, but it still means an outside dig and a new well. Note the code's replacement window rule: a like-for-like replacement window that's the largest standard size for the existing opening is exempt from the sill-height limit. That exemption doesn't help when the room is becoming a bedroom, which needs a full-size escape opening.

Outside, the well has its own minimums: 9 square feet of floor, 36 inches out from the wall, a fixed ladder past 44 inches deep, and a drain. Those parts are covered under window well installation.