About Chinook Egress
Code-compliant egress, cut into solid concrete. Locally owned, insured, and working across Calgary and the surrounding municipalities.
What We Do
Chinook Egress cuts structural openings into finished concrete foundations and makes basements legally habitable. Egress windows into poured and block walls, full-height doorways for walk-outs and separate suite entrances, the wells and stairwells that hold the earth back afterwards, and the permits and stamped structural drawings that go with all of it.
It is a narrow trade on purpose. A basement developer frames, boards and finishes a space; almost none of them want to be the party that removed a section of a load-bearing wall. That one part of the job — the sawing, the lintel, the engineering and the permit — is the whole of what we do.
Why It Exists as a Business
A basement bedroom in this city either has a compliant escape opening or it does not, and the line between the two is measured in millimetres. The building code sets the clear opening, the minimum dimension, the sill height and the well. A window that looks big enough from inside routinely fails on the clear opening, because what counts is what a person can actually pass through with the sash open — not the rough opening, and not the glass.
That gap is where the calls come from: a suite that failed an inspection, a bedroom an agent cannot describe as one, a basement development that has run into a concrete wall. Getting from one side of the line to the other means cutting the wall properly, carrying what sits above it, and documenting the result well enough that it survives an inspection and a future sale.
How We Work
We measure before we opine. Every below-grade room gets the clear opening measured through the frame with the sash open, both dimensions, and the sill height off the finished floor. You get numbers against the published figures rather than a verdict, and an inspector confirms compliance — we do not.
We work off the wall rather than off the drawing. Thickness, reinforcement and what is bearing above the opening are confirmed on site, and where a structural opinion or an APEGA-stamped lintel design is warranted, we say so before the quote rather than discovering it halfway through.
And we will tell you not to do it. If the opening already passes and only the well is short, the well is the job. If the sill sits too high, no well fixes it. If the basement is being sold as unfinished space, cutting an opening first is usually money that does not come back. Saying so costs one quote and earns the next call. What actually moves the cost.
What You Get on Every Job
- Per-room measurements — clear opening, both dimensions and sill height off the finished floor — written down, so you can check them.
- Lintel sizing and APEGA-stamped structural drawings wherever the opening or the permit review calls for them.
- Photographs of the exposed wall before the opening is cut, plus the permit reference and the inspection record where a permit was required.
- A call while the excavation is still open if the wall is not what it looked like from inside — not a note about it afterwards.
Credentials
A new company, said plainly
Chinook Egress was founded in 2026. You will not find a project count, a testimonial wall or a star rating on this site, because we are not going to manufacture one. What you can judge us on is whether the work is measured, permitted, inspected and documented — and that is checkable.
The standard we build to
From the building code. An opening has to satisfy all of these at once, and it must open from the inside without tools or special knowledge.
- Minimum clear opening
0.35 m² (3.77 sq ft)
The unobstructed area a person can actually pass through with the sash open — not the rough opening, and not the glass size.
- Minimum dimension
380 mm (15")
Neither the height nor the width of that clear opening may be less than 380 mm, whichever way the window operates.
- Maximum sill height
1.5 m above finished floor
Measured from the finished basement floor to the sill. A window set higher than this does not count as egress, whatever its size.
- Minimum well projection
760 mm clear
The window well has to hold 760 mm of clear space in front of the open sash, so the opening is usable rather than blocked by its own well.
- Ladder or steps
Required deeper than 1.2 m
Any well deeper than 1.2 m needs a permanent ladder or steps that do not reduce the required clear projection.
The 0.35 m² is a clear opening: what a person can pass through with the sash open, measured through the frame rather than across the rough opening or the glass. That distinction is the most common reason a basement window that looks large enough is failed at inspection.
What We Will Not Do
Every one of these is a way this trade routinely goes wrong for a homeowner.
Quote a wall from a photo
Thickness, reinforcement and what is bearing above the opening decide the job. None of them are visible in a picture of the inside.
Promise a permit date
A permit review belongs to the authority having jurisdiction, not to us. We will tell you what the work takes and where the parts we do not control sit.
Call a window a legal suite
Egress is one item. Fire separation, alarms, ceiling height, ventilation and permitted use are separate questions for other trades and the municipality.
Sell you a cut you do not need
If the opening passes and the well is short, the well is the job. If the sill height is what fails, no well changes it and we say so.
Where We Work
Calgary and the surrounding municipalities. The housing stock changes enormously between them, and so does what cutting into it involves.
Got a basement window that fails?
Send photos of the wall inside and out and the measurement from finished floor to sill. We will tell you what it needs, and what it does not.