Wichita Egress Windows 
Wichita Egress Windows installs code-compliant basement egress windows across Wichita and Sedgwick County: the excavation, the concrete cut, a framed and flashed opening, an egress-rated window, a window well with a ladder, and the drainage that keeps the well dry. A full install runs $3,500 to $6,500 for most poured or block foundations, with the permit itemized at cost. The work is built to Section R310 of the 2018 International Residential Code as the Wichita/Sedgwick County Unified Building and Trade Code amends it, and we handle the permit and the final inspection through MABCD.
This is not a window swap. It is structural work on your foundation, done by insured local installers who cut concrete for a living.
What makes a window a legal egress window in Wichita
Most of the country builds to the model code numbers in IRC R310: a net clear opening of at least 5.7 square feet, at least 24 inches of clear height and 20 inches of clear width, a sill no more than 44 inches above the floor, and, below grade, a window well of at least 9 square feet projecting at least 36 inches, with a permanent ladder when the well is deeper than 44 inches.
Wichita reads it differently, and the local reading is the one the inspector carries. Section 2.4.190 of the Unified Building and Trade Code rewrites the opening sections of R310:
- Net clear opening of 4.5 square feet with the window in the open position, with a total break-out area of 5.7 square feet. Break-out area is the hole you get once a removable sash or panel comes out, as opposed to the hole with the sash simply slid open. A window can meet Wichita’s 4.5 with the sash open and still need the full 5.7 once the sash is out.
- Minimum height of 19 3/4 inches (plus or minus a quarter inch) for single-hung, double-hung, and awning windows. For every other window type, width times height has to reach the 4.5 and 5.7 figures.
- Minimum width of 17 inches for casement and slider windows in the open position, and 30 1/4 inches for single- and double-hung units.
Then the well rules, which are stricter than the model code in two places. Section 2.4.220 requires a permanently affixed ladder or steps in any well deeper than 44 inches, usable with the window fully open, with rungs at least 12 inches wide, projecting at least 3 inches, and spaced no more than 12 inches on center, where the model code allows 18. Any well deeper than 30 inches needs either a guardrail built to R312 or a protective cover rated for 20 pounds per square foot, and that cover must have an emergency egress hatch above the ladder that opens with no more than 30 pounds of force, no keys, one motion. Section 2.4.225 adds a drainage section the model code does not have: the well drains into the foundation drainage system or an approved alternative, and where no foundation drain exists, the entire well area gets a minimum of 12 inches of washed gravel or crushed rock below the floor level.
Two honest notes. First, the amendment does not publish a different sill height or well size, so the model code’s 44-inch sill and 9-square-foot, 36-inch-projection well are what we build to and what inspectors expect. Second, we size every unit to beat the model 5.7 square feet net clear as well as the local 4.5-plus-break-out reading, so the opening passes either way, including for a buyer’s inspector who grew up on the model code. The full comparison, section by section, is on the Wichita egress code page.
Why Wichita basements need this
Wichita’s housing is mid-century, and most of it has a basement. American Community Survey data (2024 one-year estimates, table B25034) puts 15.1 percent of the city’s 178,820 housing units at built between 1950 and 1959, the largest single decade, and 35 percent at built between 1950 and 1979. Another 10 percent predates 1940. That is the aircraft-boom ranch belt, plus the older cores: College Hill, platted in the 1880s and mostly built out between 1900 and 1934 between Central, Kellogg, Hillside and Oliver; Riverside, platted in 1886 between the two rivers and mostly built in the 1910s and 1920s; Delano across the river, where by the 1930s most of the neighborhood was modest housing from the preceding three decades; Eastborough, where lot sales opened in April 1929.
Almost every one of those houses was built with a basement, and almost none of those basements had a window anyone was meant to climb through. A steel hopper set near the ceiling for light and ventilation is what a 1955 ranch came with. Then the basement got finished, and somebody’s kid got the room downstairs.
Here is the other reason, and it is a Wichita reason. Sedgwick County Emergency Management’s tornado guidance for the home is to go to the basement, a safe room, or the lowest, most interior room away from windows. The April 26, 1991 F5 that crossed Haysville, southeast Wichita, McConnell Air Force Base, and Andover killed 17 people; the May 3, 1999 F4 through Haysville and south Wichita killed six and destroyed over a thousand buildings in the county. The basement is where this city goes in a warning. An egress window is how you get out afterward, and it is how a firefighter gets in. That is the whole point of Section R310, and it is why the county is not casual about it.
Basement finishing, radon, and bedrooms that count
Sedgwick County is EPA radon Zone 2, moderate potential. The Kansas Radon Program’s 2010 data put the county’s average tested home at 3.6 picocuries per liter, under the 4.0 action level, but 30.9 percent of the 3,771 measurements that year came in at or above it. Test before you finish, mitigate if it reads high, and give every sleeping room its opening. A basement bedroom conversion done in that order costs a fraction of one retrofitted through finished drywall.
Appraisers and agents count conforming bedrooms only. A “four bedroom” with the fourth one behind a hopper window is a three-bedroom on the appraisal, and a buyer’s inspector will write it up. If you are on a closing timeline, code and permit help is the deadline-driven version of this work.
What we install
- Egress window installation: the full job. Permit, excavation, concrete cut, framed opening, window, well, drainage, backfill, final inspection.
- Window well replacement: code-sized wells with anchored ladders, the 12-inch gravel bed, and clean backfill, for new openings or failed old wells.
- Basement bedroom conversion: unfinished space to a legal bedroom, egress opening first.
- Basement window replacement: modern units in existing openings. No cutting, and usually no permit.
- Well covers and drainage: covers built to the Wichita hatch rule, plus gravel beds and drain-tile tie-ins.
- Concrete cutting: diamond-blade foundation sawing for window openings, poured or block.
- Code and permit help: bringing an existing basement bedroom up to the code MABCD enforces before a sale or inspection.
Every price on the pricing page is a real range. What moves your number inside it is foundation type, dig depth, and whether a machine can reach the wall.
The permit, honestly
Inside Wichita and in unincorporated Sedgwick County, the permit runs through the Metropolitan Area Building and Construction Department, MABCD, which also licenses the contractors, since Kansas issues no statewide contractor licence. Residential remodels are priced off MABCD’s Table B by valuation: $70 for the first $2,000 plus $11 for each additional $1,000. On a $3,500 to $6,500 egress job that works out to roughly $92 to $125, and it appears on our quote as its own line at cost.
The suburbs are their own story. Derby, Haysville, Park City, and Valley Center each run their own building office and set their own fees, and Derby is on the 2024 IRC as of January 1, 2026. Andover adopted the Wichita/Sedgwick County code by its own ordinance in 2025 and now takes an MABCD licence plus a certificate of insurance instead of a city licence. Maize and Goddard contract with MABCD for plan review and inspections. We file with the right desk and tell you which one it is at the measure.
One promise we will not make: that a room “will pass.” The inspection belongs to MABCD or the city. We build to the code, file the paperwork, and show up for the final.
Clay, rain, and why the well matters here
Two facts about Wichita ground decide whether an egress window stays dry.
First, the soil. NRCS maps much of the Wichita area in Goessel and Rosehill silty clays, both Hydrologic Soil Group D, the group defined by a very slow infiltration rate and clays with high shrink-swell potential. Goessel runs 35 to 55 percent clay with a perched seasonal water table at 2 to 3 feet; Rosehill is a smectitic clay weathered from shale that NRCS calls very plastic and very sticky. Down on the river flats it is worse: the Kansas Geological Survey describes the flat land along the Arkansas as very poorly drained, which is why Wichita built a flood diversion system around the city in the first place.
Second, the rain. NOAA’s 1991 to 2020 normals for Wichita put May at 5.17 inches and June at 4.93, the two wettest months of a 34.31-inch year, and April through June alone delivers 13.2 inches, 38 percent of the annual total, across 52.7 thunderstorm days a year. That is the season a bad well fills. Wichita’s code answer is the 12-inch washed gravel rule, and ours is the same, plus a real outlet: the footing drain where the house has one, a deep gravel dry well where it does not. More on the drainage page and in our post on why Wichita wells flood in May.
Where we work
Wichita and all of Sedgwick County, plus Derby to the south, Haysville on the south side, Andover to the east in Butler County, Maize on K-96 to the northwest, Goddard west on US-54, Park City up I-135, and Valley Center in the river valley to the north. Each town’s page says whose permit desk covers it.
Season and scheduling
The amended code sets Wichita’s frost depth at 24 inches, so the dig season here is most of the year, not the April-to-November window of the northern plains. The two slow stretches are the hard-freeze weeks of January and February, when frozen clay is slow to excavate and a nuisance to backfill properly, and the May-June saturation, when a hole in Group D clay is a hole full of water. Fall is ideal: dry ground, the permit in hand, and the room finished inside over winter. Interior-only work like window swaps runs in any month.
The measure is free, on site, and ends with a flat written quote for your exact wall. Read the FAQ or the pricing page first if you like, then request the measure.