Basement Windows and Doors for Calgary Landlords & Property Managers
Whatever the previous tenant slept in, a basement room with no compliant escape window is not a bedroom. You pay for that in two ways: the rent a real bedroom would bring in, and the exposure you hold every night someone sleeps there. This page is about fixing both.
A bedroom you are not allowed to list
A basement room whose window fails egress is, on paper, a den or storage space. Advertising it as a bedroom invites trouble from your insurer, the municipality and, sooner or later, a tenant. The rent difference that one proper window makes is usually the whole argument for doing the work.
The risk you are holding right now
It is not a theoretical problem. Someone is sleeping below grade with a single way out, and the lease has your name on it. We will not put a number on that or soften it, but it is why owners call us, and waiting does not make it smaller.
A room-by-room picture, so you can plan the spend
Across several properties you will usually find rooms that already pass, rooms where only the well falls short, and rooms that need a larger window cut into the foundation. We break that down by room and by address so the work can be phased rather than paid for all at once.
Scheduled around the people living there
Installing an egress window means digging outside, cutting concrete and pulling a permit, and none of it is quiet. We order the work to keep the suite usable for as much of the job as we can, and at the quote we are straight with you about what a tenant living there will notice.
Our permit, your paper trail
If the address needs a permit, we check that with the authority having jurisdiction and submit the application ourselves. You are left with an inspected, permitted window on the property record, which is exactly what a lender, an insurer or the next buyer will want to see.
We will say so when the window will not pay for itself
On some houses the foundation, the well depth or poor access push the cost high enough that the extra rent would take an unreasonable time to cover it. Where that is true we tell you, and the room stays rented as the space it really is.
Situations we see from owners
- A suite purchased as legal that was never actually permitted
- A basement bedroom written up for egress at a City of Calgary suite inspection
- A den rented out as a bedroom despite an undersized window
- A single-family home being set up with a legal secondary suite
- A separate entrance door planned for a basement unit
- A review of every rental before refinancing or selling
Have every basement room measured
Send us the addresses. Each basement room gets measured against the code figures, and you hear back which windows pass, which just need a new well, and which need a larger opening and a new window.