Basement Egress

Egress the basement via the window

Basement Egress
Climb out this in a hurry? Yeah. Nah

Two down, one to go.

Second window done.


I took way too long to replace the first one, but the second went much quicker.
If you need a recap, here is the basement window blog.
I was digging the third and was just 1-2 shovels deep when my phone rang... It was the guy I emailed 2.5 weeks ago about installing an egress window.
Turned out to be a really cool guy who was very sorry my email got lost and wanted to know if we still wanted to embiggen the window.
Quick quote from him and confab with Freddy, and we were "OK to GO" for the egress upgrade. I was happy to stop digging, but on the fence with the amount of money that the pause in work was going to cost.

Met the guy a few days later, shook hands to seal the work order, as is the North Idaho way, and he came back the next day with a mini excavator to dig a good-sized hole next to the house.

Grandson has a digger the same colour
Missed the irrigation pipe and ripped up the some cable - no one complained
Hydraulic saw for the win

Sawed through a 110v cable on the inside without missing a beat (or tripping the breaker - that's some skill).

Two saw job

Turns out we have an 8-inch thick slab, and no reo, so out with the longer saw to finish the job.

Window be big

So the rough idea is that the window needs to be a given size. Varies slightly by state and even county, but roughly the size that a fireman can enter while wearing a breathing rig.
Also, as per the photo, it is obvious now why we pushed to get this done before we did any drywalling (plastering) and laid the carpet.
We knew it would be a mess....aaaaand we probably slightly underestimated the mess aspect.

Window in.
Looks good from the outer
River rock in the bottom for drainage
NCT for the win

Any excuse to buy a new tool. NCT. Non-Contact Tester. Totally forget what we called them in Australia, but pretty sure it was not an NCT....
Anyway, very happy with the Fluke. It also has a circuit breaker trace function, which is the main reason I bought it. Well, another reason, both functions are important in this house.

We got a contractor in to tidy up the inside wall and window. Just beyond my interest to find the time and learn the skills to make a mess of it.
When you know what you are doing, it took the guy about 3-4 hours to finish the inside. Worth every cent (I'm not having a good time doing the basement drywall - another blog topic).