Our 6 Step Egress Window Installation Process: Optimized for Efficiency and Quality
Step 1: Initial Consultation
Our initial homeowner consultation includes a thorough assessment of your home. We look at the basement space you want to remodel and what you want to use that space for. We measure your space to recommend the size of egress window that works best and is compliant with building code. We discuss the types of furniture arrangements and window coverings you envision in your new space. We explain how to calculate the potential increase in your home’s value when you add usable square footage.
Our consultation looks at your home’s orientation to the morning and afternoon sun and considers drainage around your home. We discuss the type of egress window best suited to your needs, as well as your options for egress window wells and window well covers.
You learn how we excavate and install your new egress window in just one day using our innovative, proprietary techniques. We help you select the best value window options for your particular needs, and we show you how we redesigned the installation process to make your egress window safer, more energy efficient, and less susceptible to rot and damage over time.
Step 2: Preparation
To facilitate the speedy installation of your basement egress window, we ask that you clear furniture and blinds from around the project area prior to our crew’s arrival. The small section of your basement around the window is enclosed in a plastic sheet to minimize the mess.
Brighter Basements uses equipment specially designed to make your basement egress window installation efficient and non-disruptive. We protect your landscaping and pathways to the full extent possible using tarps and plywood.
We make a point of being considerate of your neighbors during our installation process. If it’s impossible to install your egress window without encroaching on a neighbor’s property, we do so only with their permission, and we leave virtually zero evidence of our presence upon completion.
Step 3: Excavation
Unlike other egress window installers, Brighter Basements does not perform the difficult work of excavation using unskilled day laborers. Most companies spend a full day on excavation, because they still excavate by hand. Your excavation will be handled by the owner and his regular staff using equipment specifically designed to make this time-consuming, labor-intensive task more efficient and economical. We typically have the hole for your egress window excavated in 1.5 hours.
Step 4: Foundation Cut
Once the hole is excavated and secured, we begin to cut the hole in your foundation. Our skilled installers use concrete cutting saws to enlarge the opening in your foundation wall. All the cutting is done from the outside. While the egress window well process is noisy and wet, most of the mess remains outside of the wall.
The block of concrete from the opening (typically 800 pounds) is carefully removed and hauled away for recycling, along with any excess soil that is not used for backfill.
Step 5: Window Installation
Brighter Basements pioneered innovative egress window well installation techniques to improve the structural stability of the foundation, increase the amount of glass relative to the opening, and minimize maintenance of the window framing.
We uniquely frame the window opening with our proprietary structural steel ExoFrame rather than the 8 pieces of wood traditionally used by installers. This steel frame ensures your egress window opening is now the strongest part of your foundation wall, not the weakest. Because our steel ExoFrame is much thinner than wood 2x8s, you enjoy a larger area of glass relative to the size of the opening in your foundation wall. And of course, steel framing is not susceptible to termites, mold or rot.
We set the egress window in place in the opening, and the edges are sealed with a high-quality, weather-resistant industrial glass sealing gasket rather than caulk, which dries and deteriorates quickly in Colorado’s dry environment.
Step 6: Window Well Installation
The most important aspect of your egress window well installation is maintaining positive drainage of moisture away from the foundation. To ensure proper drainage Brighter Basements carefully tamps down the back-filled dirt around your well and installs 500 to 1000 lbs. of rock in the floor of the hole below the level of the window sill.
Our proprietary window well design is the only well on the market with interior flanges. The use of interior well flanges requires significantly less soil excavated. Excavating less soil not only saves time, but also reduces the risks of soil settling and potential impact to your home’s foundation.
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"The team was fast, thorough, efficient & extremely considerate. The workmanship, materials & skill used were first class."
– Ben I. in Denver, CO
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“They were the most cost efficient, had the best customer service & the best overall plan. The BEST all around!!!”
– Renee Z. in Castle Rock, CO