New window wells
Dec. 5th, 2019 01:22 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
elizillaOur house (built in 2016) has two egress windows in the basement. These are full size windows that look out into deep window wells - the basement is entirely below grade. They are fire escapes so the pit walls were these heavy duty plastic things with ladders molded into the side. They're four or five feet deep. These plastic things are what our builder recommended but we are having to replace them.
This year we noticed they are slowly distorting, collapsing inwards, and this fall we discovered we can no longer open the windows all the way because they hit the wall when they swing out.
Even before they failed I was not crazy about them. Chipmunks keep getting trapped down there. We discover it when we hear them leaping and scrabbling against the windows. Each time it happens we find an appropriate stick and put it down there for them to climb to get out. It usually takes them an hour or so to find it since chipmunks are idiots. But we can't leave the sticks in, because there isn't room to open the windows with sticks in there. Also the window wells are ugly even without tree branches in them.
The house is out of warranty so our builder won't come back for free. I don't think he wants the job; it would take a lot of arm twisting to get him to do it even if we paid. So we hired a different builder, one who specializes in this. They excavated the window wells, removed the plastic things, and installed block walls instead. They are just finishing up now.
The blocks they use are neat. They're decorative molded concrete and come in a variety of colors; we chose "camel". They have a clever arrangement of pins that mates them together in a way that each course of blocks is set back one inch compared to the course below. The overall size of the wells is larger, and they get wider towards the top so more lights and air come in. We had one of them made larger still, with a steep staircase on one side. There's enough room that we can put some plants in there in spring, too. They will look much nicer and chipmunks should be able to climb them too!
This year we noticed they are slowly distorting, collapsing inwards, and this fall we discovered we can no longer open the windows all the way because they hit the wall when they swing out.
Even before they failed I was not crazy about them. Chipmunks keep getting trapped down there. We discover it when we hear them leaping and scrabbling against the windows. Each time it happens we find an appropriate stick and put it down there for them to climb to get out. It usually takes them an hour or so to find it since chipmunks are idiots. But we can't leave the sticks in, because there isn't room to open the windows with sticks in there. Also the window wells are ugly even without tree branches in them.
The house is out of warranty so our builder won't come back for free. I don't think he wants the job; it would take a lot of arm twisting to get him to do it even if we paid. So we hired a different builder, one who specializes in this. They excavated the window wells, removed the plastic things, and installed block walls instead. They are just finishing up now.
The blocks they use are neat. They're decorative molded concrete and come in a variety of colors; we chose "camel". They have a clever arrangement of pins that mates them together in a way that each course of blocks is set back one inch compared to the course below. The overall size of the wells is larger, and they get wider towards the top so more lights and air come in. We had one of them made larger still, with a steep staircase on one side. There's enough room that we can put some plants in there in spring, too. They will look much nicer and chipmunks should be able to climb them too!
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Date: 2019-12-05 07:15 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-12-05 07:50 pm (UTC)The 'steps' are not like true staircases people would go up and down all the time, but they'd be adequate to scramble up in case of fire, easier than those plastic ladders. They are 12" to 18" high, so, only three of them. They're about 10" wide, not just the inch for each course of block. It is like this in only one of the window wells. There was not enough room to do this in the other window well, since it is hemmed in by the gas meter, the compressor for the AC, and the retaining wall and trees along the property line. Both windows are in the same room in the basement.