Guides & News
Practical advice, maintenance guides, and local foundation news from the team at Chinook Egress. Stay informed and keep your foundation sound.
Casement vs Slider: Why the Window Type Decides
A casement swings its whole sash clear. A slider only ever opens half its width. The same hole in the concrete can pass as one and fail as the other.
What Inspectors Actually Check on an Egress Window
An inspection is five measurements and one demonstration. Where the tape goes, and why the clear opening is the figure that fails people.
Block vs Poured Foundations: What Changes When You Cut
A poured wall is one object. A block wall is a stack of hollow ones. How to tell which you have from your own basement, and why it changes the job.
Selling a House With an Illegal Basement Suite in Calgary
Three kinds of buyer react three different ways, and only one pays you for the suite. What the file looks like, and where egress sits among fixable problems.
Window Well Covers and Code: What a Cover Must Not Do
A cover is allowed. What it may not do is make the escape route need tools or special knowledge. The 'special knowledge' clause is the one people miss.
Walk-Out Basement vs Separate Entrance: Which Do You Have?
Your lot decides. One is a doorway onto existing grade; the other is a retaining structure with a door at the bottom. Priced and engineered differently.
Lintels Explained: What Holds the Wall Up After You Cut It
The lintel is the job. What it carries, why bearing at the ends matters as much as the beam, and why no website should ever size one for you.
Can You Cut an Egress Window in a Calgary Winter?
Frozen ground is a digging problem, not a cutting problem. What genuinely changes between January and July, and the one risk that shows up in spring.
A Basement Bedroom Without Egress: What Actually Happens
Usually nothing, for years. Then a sale, a suite inspection, an insurance question or a fire arrives — and the room stops being a bedroom.
How Long Does an Egress Window Take to Install?
The sawing is the short part. Engineering, permitting and inspection set the calendar — none of which a contractor controls, or should promise a date for.
Cutting a New Opening vs Enlarging an Existing Window
Enlarging sounds cheaper and often is not. Why widening rarely fixes the failure, what going down costs you that going sideways does not, and how to choose.
Window Well Size and Drainage in Calgary
A window well is a bucket until you drain it. The clear projection requirement, why a swinging sash eats it, and what Calgary clay does to an undrained well.
Can You Cut a Door Into a Poured Concrete Foundation?
Yes, and the concrete is the easy part. What governs the job is what sits above the cut line and what the soil outside is doing, not the strength of the wall.
Do I Need a Permit for an Egress Window in Calgary?
The permit question is really a structural question. What separates a window swap from a structural alteration, who the authority is, and what we handle.
Egress Window Cost in Calgary: What Actually Moves the Number
No range, on purpose. What actually drives the price of cutting an egress window into a Calgary foundation, and why two honest quotes can be far apart.
Egress Window Size Requirements in Alberta
Three numbers, two of which apply at once. Why the same rough opening passes as a casement and fails as a slider — and why we won’t publish a size chart.
Calgary Secondary Suite Egress Rules: What the Bedroom Has to Have
The five egress figures a suite bedroom is measured against, what a clear opening actually means, and why the window that looks big enough usually is not.