About Topeka Egress Windows

Topeka Egress Windows is a locally operated egress window service for Topeka, Shawnee County, and the towns within about forty minutes of the capital: Lawrence, Holton, Auburn, Rossville, and Osage City. We do one category of work, cutting and finishing code-compliant emergency escape openings in basement walls, and the trades that surround it: window wells, well drainage, covers, basement window replacement, and concrete cutting.

What we are

A coordinator with a trade specialty. When you request a measure, a local installer who cuts foundation concrete for a living comes to your house, checks the wall, the footing, the joists, the grade outside, and what is running through the wall cavity, and hands you a flat written quote. The crews we work with are insured local installers, and inside the Topeka city limits that also means licensed through the city’s Development Services Division, because Topeka licenses its own contractors (Class A, B, and C general contractor licenses, ICC exams, proof of liability and workers’ compensation insurance). Kansas issues no statewide general contractor license, so the city license is the one that matters here.

We do not carry a showroom, a sales team, or a hidden price list. The ranges on the pricing page are the ranges the crews actually work in.

What we are not

We are not a window company that added “egress” to the brochure. The difference matters. A window dealer sells you a unit sized to fit a hole; an egress installer makes the hole, sizes the header above it, builds the well outside it, and drains the well, then sets a window that beats 5.7 square feet of net clear opening. The window is maybe a fifth of the job. The other four fifths are excavation, saw work, structure, and water management, and those are where cheap installs fail.

How we think about code

The City of Topeka adopted the 2021 International Residential Code in December 2023 (Ordinance 20467, codified in Topeka Municipal Code Chapter 14.55). Unincorporated Shawnee County adopts Topeka’s Title 14 by reference. Lawrence, in Douglas County, is still on the 2018 IRC with its own amendments. We keep track of that because it changes which desk the permit goes to and, in Lawrence’s case, when an older basement is required to have egress at all.

We quote Section R310 by number on every page of this site, and we build to it: 5.7 square feet net clear, 24 inches high, 20 inches wide, sill at or under 44 inches, a 9-square-foot well with 36 inches of projection, a permanent ladder past 44 inches of depth. If an inspector’s reading of a detail differs from ours, the inspector wins, and we fix it. What we will not do is promise a room “will pass,” because the inspection is the city’s or county’s decision, not ours.

How we think about water

Most of Topeka sits on slow-draining clay soils (the Pawnee and Wymore series in the USDA soil survey of Shawnee County are the ones you hear about most), and NOAA’s climate normals make May and June the wettest months of the year here. A window well is a hole in that clay, right against your foundation, at the wettest time of year. So every well we install gets a gravel drainage bed below the sill, tied to the footing drain where the house has one and to a gravel dry well where it does not, and we will tell you which your house needs before you sign anything. That is the drainage page in one paragraph.

What to expect

1. You request a free on-site measure.
2. An installer walks the wall with you, inside and out, and explains what he sees.
3. You get a flat written quote, with the permit fee itemized.
4. We file the permit with the City of Topeka, Shawnee County, or the town’s office.
5. The crew digs, cuts, frames, sets, drains, backfills, and calls in the final.
6. You get a conforming opening and, if that was the goal, a bedroom that counts.

Start with the egress window installation page for the full process, the FAQ for the questions everybody asks, or the pricing page for the numbers. Then request the measure.