Legal Secondary Suite Egress Compliance in Cochrane
The egress work that turns a basement into a legal secondary suite. We read the inspector report, identify every bedroom that fails, and cut the openings that clear it.
Suite Compliance on Cochrane foundations
Two local facts govern a Cochrane suite job. The first is that the authority having jurisdiction is the Town of Cochrane, not the City of Calgary — we work from the written report or correspondence that office has given you and describe nothing about its process here. The second is the ground. Foundations are mostly modern and reinforced, but they sit on dense glacial till with cobbles and shallow bedrock as the land climbs west, so digging a well or a stairwell can be slower and more expensive than cutting the wall. That is the reverse of the usual balance.
The buyer is typically a commuter family adding a lower unit for income or for a relative, in a house built new within the last few decades. Sloped sites are common enough that a grade-level door is genuinely on the table rather than a theoretical option. What matters for a Cochrane quote is that the excavation is assessed honestly up front: we would rather tell you the dig is the expensive part before you commit than discover cobble and rock at depth with a crew standing on the lot.
How we run this one
Read the file
Send the inspector report or the suite application. We work from what the City actually wrote down, not from a phone description.
Room-by-room audit
Every bedroom in the suite is measured against the clear-opening, dimension and sill-height requirements, and we tell you which ones already pass.
Scope and permit
One scope covering every non-compliant opening, with the building permit application and any structural drawings it needs.
Cut and install
Openings cut, lintels set, windows and wells installed — sequenced so the suite is out of service for as little time as possible.
Ready for re-inspection
We leave the work in an inspectable state and hand over the documentation the file needs.
Town of Cochrane is the authority having jurisdiction for this work, and we confirm what the wall is actually made of before anything is quoted. No price appears on this page — here is what moves the number , and here is the job in full .