Exterior of Egress Window

[sandman]

I am installing an Egress Window for one of my customers, and they would like to have some type of retaining wall as the exterior structure. Has anyone done this before? What type of product is recommended, depth of excavation, distance from window, etc.....
Your Help is Appreciated!

[teacher]

To my knowledge there is no specific guideline for distance from window. Typically you are going to want to excavate so that your first course is below grade, but in this case (with an egress window) the entire wall will be below grade. The general rule, and this varies by municipality, is that a SRW wall exceeding 4' requires soil reinforcement (geogrid) and an engineer working on the project. How far below grade does your egress window go?

[Whyzman]

This article for the city of Hopkins had some excellent explanations and images: http://www.hopkinsmn.com/inspections/building/windows/egresswindows.html

I found it Googling: http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=ISO-8859-1&q=egress+window+design+MN

I hope this helps...

[Whyzman]

I thought I'd add this after following up with some of the hits generated by the Googled parameters in my above post.

http://www.fmam.org/ResidentialFireSprinklerTaskForce.aspx

There's no date I could find regarding when it was written, but the proposed legislation sounds very interesting. I realize it would squelch the proposed egress window project you are contemplating if enacted, but it certainly has merit where excavation of an egress would create problems.

Toward the bottom of the article it proposes waiving the egress requirements to only those of light and ventilation if properly "sprinked." No hints are given regarding cost of an install...as noted early in the article, the discussion also includes allowing for homeowner installation with a pulled permit...

[teacher]

Thanks, Whyzman. Learned a lot from your post. There is some great info on the link you provided.

[sandman]

Wow, thanks for all the great info!
Good to see this forum is starting to pick-up with some good questions/answers. I'll make sure to visit more often