How Long Does an Egress Window Install Take?

When a homeowner asks how long a new basement window will take, they tend to mean one of two things. Either: how many days will a crew be in my yard with a saw running? Or: when can the bedroom actually be used?

The answers are far apart, and a window installer only controls the first.

Time on site versus time to finished

Time on site is the stretch when our crew is at the house digging, cutting, setting the window and sealing it. It is noisy while it lasts, it is relatively short, and it is what most people picture when they ask.

Time to finished runs from the day you commit to the job until the final inspection is passed. Time on site sits inside it, alongside the engineering, the permit application and its review, the wait for the window to be made, and the wait for an inspection slot.

On nearly every basement window job, the site days are a small slice of the whole. Plan around the site days alone and you get the classic mistake: a framer booked for a room whose window opening does not exist yet.

Why you will not get a day count from us

We publish no duration for this work, on the same principle that keeps prices off this site.

Part of the timeline belongs to the authority having jurisdiction: the City of Calgary, or the City of Airdrie, Foothills County, Rocky View County or Wheatland County, depending on the address. Their review and their inspection bookings are out of our hands, and we hold no verified current figures for either. Any installer quoting you a municipal turnaround is guessing out loud.

Part of it belongs to whoever builds the window. Lead time on a given unit in a given season is set by the manufacturer.

And part of it depends on what the excavation turns up, which nobody can know at the moment you ask.

The one timing commitment we make: your quote arrives within 48 hours of our site visit. That step is ours from start to finish. After it, we put the steps in the right order; we do not promise dates for them.

Every step, first to last

The order matters more than the length, because out-of-order steps are where the real delays come from.

1. Site visit. We look at the wall construction and reinforcement, whatever bears on the wall above the planned opening, the grade on the outside, and whether equipment can reach that side of the house. The scope comes out of this visit, and so does every step after it.

2. Engineering. A P.Eng. licensed with APEGA designs how the opening is spanned and where the load goes, and supplies drawings plus letters of assurance where they are needed. It has to follow the visit, and the permit cannot be applied for until it is done.

3. Permit. The application goes to the authority having jurisdiction. Its length is the hardest to predict of any step, and it is the one homeowners most often forget to plan for at all.

4. Utility locates. Alberta One-Call comes before any digging, with no exceptions, and it needs its own notice.

5. Ordering the window. The unit is chosen from its published clear-opening figures, not from the size of the hole; the reasons are in the size requirements. Where we can, the window is being built while the permit is under review.

6. Digging. The well gets excavated first, since the wall is cut from the outside face.

7. Opening the wall. Core drilling, wall sawing, and a lintel set and bearing before any concrete under it comes out. The load is carried first and released second.

8. Window in, well in. The window is set and sealed, the well installed, drainage connected and the hole backfilled.

9. Inspection. Booked as the permit requires.

10. Putting the yard back. Grading, sod and whatever else the dig disturbed and the contract says we restore.

Sequencing errors that lose the most time

Building the floor or the walls first. This is the costly one. The 1.5 m sill height is taken from the finished floor, so a floor laid ahead of the cut changes the very measurement the window has to meet. Framing and drywall in front of the foundation also have to be pulled off again before we can cut. Open the wall before you finish the room.

Buying the window before the engineer has spoken. The opening size comes from the structural design as well as the code minimums. Homeowners who buy first and check fit second sometimes end up storing a window they cannot install.

Scheduling finishers against a guessed permit date. Every trade that follows us is waiting on an inspection nobody can book with certainty ahead of time. Leave room in the schedule, or be ready to pay for a trade to come back.

What stretches the days on site

With paperwork in hand and the crew at the house, these are the things that really lengthen the physical job:

Digging by hand. Without machine access, the well is dug with shovels. In the older inner city (Bankview, Killarney, Altadore, Inglewood) tight lots, fences and lane-only access make that common, and it is often the biggest single variable in how long the crew is there.

Dense rebar. Steel does not stop a diamond blade, but it slows the cut and wears the blade down. More reinforcement means a longer cut.

A deeper well. More digging, more soil to haul, and once the well passes 1.2 m, a permanent ladder or steps that must fit without eating into the 760 mm clear projection.

Surprises in the ground. Services nobody marked, old buried structures, groundwater, or a wall in worse shape than the outside suggested.

Weather, though less than people expect. Cold affects digging more than sawing, and it gets its own article.

So what should you do?

Begin sooner than you think you need to, and begin with the site visit, not the window catalogue.

If a tenant move-in, a listing or a family visit is fixed, count back from that date and lay every step above on a calendar, with generous room around the municipal ones. If it does not fit, move the date; squeezing the process only moves the problem.

Book a site visit, and if you would rather hand off the permit and engineering paperwork entirely, our permits service handles that part.