About Chinook Basement Windows and Doors
Basement windows and doors, supplied and installed in Calgary. An insured, locally owned company serving Calgary and the surrounding municipalities.
What We Do
Chinook Basement Windows and Doors is a basement windows and doors company. We help Calgary homeowners choose, supply and install the windows and exterior doors that sit below grade: egress windows for bedrooms, replacement and enlarged basement windows, walk-out and separate-entrance doors for suites, plus the window wells, covers, permits and engineering those openings bring with them.
We keep the focus below grade deliberately. A basement window or door is fitted into a foundation wall, not a framed one, and a bigger unit often means taking concrete out and carrying the load above it. Most renovators would rather hand that part off, so we take the whole opening on: the unit, the cut, the lintel and the paperwork.
Why It Exists as a Business
Picking a basement window is not like picking one for the main floor. If the room is a bedroom, Alberta's building code sets the clear opening, the smallest allowed dimension, how high the sill can sit and how much room the well must leave. Plenty of windows seem generous from inside and still come up short, because the measurement that counts is the space you could climb through with the sash fully open, not the frame or the glass.
Most of our enquiries start there. A rental suite came back from inspection with a bedroom flagged, a listing cannot call a room a bedroom, or a basement renovation has stalled because the window or door the plan needs is bigger than the hole in the concrete. Fixing that takes the right product, an opening made and supported properly, and a record of the work that an inspector and a future buyer can rely on.
How We Work
Measurements come first, opinions second. In each below-grade room we open the sash and record the clear opening, its height and width, and the sill height from the finished floor. Those figures are set out beside the published requirements for you to read; the final word on compliance belongs to the inspector, not to us.
The wall on site outranks any drawing. Before we recommend a window or door size, we confirm how thick the foundation is, how it is reinforced and what it carries above the planned opening. If that calls for an engineer’s opinion or an APEGA-stamped lintel, you hear about it at quote stage instead of mid-job.
Sometimes the right advice is to spend less. An opening that already passes with an undersized well only needs a new well. A sill that sits too high cannot be rescued by any well. And a basement going to market as unfinished space rarely earns back the cost of a new opening. We would rather lose that job than sell it. See what shapes the cost.
Included With Every Install
- A written record for each room of the clear opening, its height and width, and the sill height from the finished floor, for you to verify yourself.
- An engineered lintel and APEGA-stamped drawings whenever a new or wider opening, or the permit reviewer, requires them.
- Photos of the foundation before any concrete is removed, along with the permit number and inspection record on permitted work.
- A phone call, while the hole is still open, if the foundation turns out different from what we expected — never a surprise on the invoice.
Credentials
We are a new company
Chinook Basement Windows and Doors opened in 2026. That is why this site shows no tally of past jobs, no testimonials and no star ratings: we would have to make them up. Hold us instead to measured, permitted, inspected and documented work, which you can verify for yourself.
The code figures behind every egress window we fit
Set by the Alberta building code. A basement bedroom window needs to meet every one of these together, and anyone inside must be able to open it with no tools or special knowledge.
- Minimum clear opening
0.35 m² (3.77 sq ft)
The open, unobstructed space someone can really get through once the sash is out of the way — measured neither across the rough opening nor across the glass.
- Minimum dimension
380 mm (15")
Whichever way the window opens, that clear opening cannot measure under 380 mm in either direction, height or width.
- Maximum sill height
1.5 m above finished floor
Taken from the finished basement floor up to the sill. However large a window is, it does not count as egress if its sill sits above this height.
- Minimum well projection
760 mm clear
In front of the open sash, the well must keep 760 mm of clear space, so the well itself never stands in the way of the exit.
- Ladder or steps
Required deeper than 1.2 m
A window well more than 1.2 m deep must have a permanent ladder or steps, and they may not cut into the clear projection the well is required to keep.
The 0.35 m² refers to clear opening — the space someone can actually climb through with the sash open, measured inside the frame, not across the rough opening or the glass. Basement windows that look big enough fail inspection over this distinction more often than over anything else.
What We Will Not Do
Four habits that cost basement renovation clients money, and that we refuse to adopt.
Price an opening off a picture
The size of a basement window or door job depends on wall thickness, rebar and the load overhead, and an interior photo shows none of those.
Guarantee when a permit lands
The municipality runs its own review on its own schedule. We explain the steps involved and point out which of them are outside our hands.
Treat one window as a whole suite
A compliant egress window covers a single requirement. Alarms, fire separation, ventilation, ceiling height and approved use are handled by other trades and the municipality.
Upsell a bigger opening
A passing window with a shallow well gets a new well, nothing more. A window that fails on sill height will not be fixed by a well, and we tell you that up front.
Where We Work
Calgary plus the nearby towns and cities. Foundations differ widely from one to the next, which changes how a new basement window or door gets put in.
Need a new basement window or door?
Send us interior and exterior photos plus the floor-to-sill height. You will hear what the opening needs and, just as usefully, what it can do without.