Basement Windows

beenthere · Nov 12, 2005

That makes good sense that it couldn't 'tilt' in (or out). And you said you had the ¼" rod in to hold the kerf open too. Missed that first time around.
Good engineering, I must say.

EddieWalker · Nov 13, 2005

Very interesting project. Thanks for posting it.

How do you keep the water out of the hole in the ground?

Eddie

inveresk · Nov 13, 2005

Quite a saw. I can see the advantages over a circular blade, particularly for 8" thick material which you would have had to tackle from both sides with a circular saw.

RobS · Nov 13, 2005

How do you keep the water out of the hole in the ground?


During the cut it got pretty muddy. Used a shop vac a couple of times to get rid of some water. Same on the inside of the basement after the plunge cut.

For rain water and such, that's a good question. We have two similar windows in our basement, installed during construction. Each window well has a drain that connects to the perimeter drain at footing depth.

Mark and I talked about it for his but that meant a whole lot more digging to get down to his perimeter drain. The other consideration is that our soil up here is extremely sandy. Any water that does accumulate will soak down into the soil pretty quickly.

keeney, shoot me a PM if you are interested. Mark has to finish one more window at his place then two at his dads in NY. It might be next spring when he's done but I can't remember /forums/images/graemlins/smile.gif

keeney · Nov 13, 2005

RE:

"How do you keep the water out of the hole in the ground?"

When I was a kid, my father added a basement egress window to our house (so I could move downstairs).

We over-dug the window well by two feet and then filled it back up with rock. This gave quite a bit of capacity to hold water before it runs in the window opening. The water would just slowly soak into the soil.

Also, the grading around the opening was setup to slope away, and a gutter was added to the roof above.

RobS · Nov 14, 2005

We did over dig this one, but only by about six inches. Put pea gravel in the bottom /forums/images/graemlins/smile.gif

rswyan · Nov 14, 2005

Hey Rick,

( If I get serious, maybe I should PM you and ask about buying that slightly used saw from your buddy

. )

After you get done drop me a line - I might want want it - need to put in a door to the back basement room. /forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif

HobbleCreek · Nov 14, 2005

Great project, great use of the tractor, and great pics. Thanks. Sure would have liked to see pics of the tractor pulling that slab out of there. /forums/images/graemlins/smile.gif

-- Grant

RobS · Nov 14, 2005

Sure would have liked to see pics of the tractor pulling that slab out of there 

You know, at this point I'm glad there WEREN'T any pics of that. It couldn't have been pretty. I could see from my seat the top edge of my bucket was bowing down pretty good and we did stop to add air to my front tires. They were very close to rolling off the rims. Fortunately, it was all done VERY slowly so I could see what was happening all the time.

Today we calculated the slab to be about 2030 lbs and my loader lift is something like 800 lbs. Of course, I wasn't lifting it straight up, more of a lift and drag move.

Thanks for the compliments on the project. It was a lot of fun for both of us /forums/images/graemlins/smile.gif