Egress Window Installation in Ankeny, IA

Ankeny is the fastest-building city in central Iowa, and the shape of that growth is why so much of our week is spent here. The census counted 27,117 residents in 2000, 45,582 in 2010, and 67,887 in 2020, and the city’s 2024 special census put it at 76,207. Nearly all of that arrived as single-family houses with tall poured basements. Those basements are now being finished, one at a time, by owners who need bedrooms rather than storage.

That produces a very particular job. Most Ankeny egress work is not about a leaking window or a rusted well. They are about cutting the second and third escape openings into a wall that left the builder with exactly one.

What is usually down there

The typical Ankeny basement is in good structural shape and simply under-equipped. Poured walls, footing drain tile already in the ground, a rough-in for a future bathroom, a single egress window in whatever corner the original plan put it, and eight hundred to twelve hundred square feet of open floor. The builder permitted an unfinished basement, and an unfinished basement needs one way out. Your plan for two bedrooms and a family room is a different code question entirely, because the requirement follows the sleeping room, not the floor.

Structurally this is the most predictable version of our work. Modern concrete cuts cleanly and consistently for a wet saw, there is drain tile to connect a well’s gravel bed into, and lots in the newer plats generally leave a machine somewhere to drive. Those three conditions are exactly the ones that keep a quote in the lower half of the $3,500 to $6,500 range.

The city’s own housing analysis backs that up: working from county assessor data, Ankeny’s comprehensive plan found that about 71 percent of its single-family homes were built after 1990, with roughly 4,500 going up between 2000 and 2009 and another 3,000 in the six years after that. Very little of this city is old.

The exception is the pre-boom core, the neighborhoods around City Hall and along central First Street and Ankeny Boulevard, where the plan puts the mean year built at about 1969 and the range stretches back to the 1860s. Uptown Ankeny, the historic commercial district along 3rd Street between SW Scott and SW Pleasant, anchors that part of town. Houses there run to mid-century block foundations with small steel windows. They cut course by course rather than by saw line, and they usually lack footing tile, so the well gets a deep gravel dry well instead of a tie-in. Different work, similar price, entirely different afternoon.

Ankeny does not borrow anyone else’s code

Most metro suburbs adopt an edition of the International Residential Code and amend it lightly. Ankeny went further and maintains its own, the 2024 Ankeny Residential Code, carried in Municipal Code Chapter 184 and adopted by ordinance as part of the city’s 2024 code package effective July 1, 2025. Applications go through the Building Division and the city’s Ankeny One Stop portal, and the city’s own permit handout names egress windows explicitly in its list of work that requires one, so there is no ambiguity about whether your project is permitted work.

For the wall itself, none of that changes the tape measure. Ankeny’s published egress handout lists the same figures used across the metro: 5.7 square feet of net clear openable area, 20 inches of clear width, 24 inches of clear height, and a sill no more than 44 inches above the floor, with the 5.0 square foot allowance available where the sill sits within 44 inches of the outside grade. Wells need 9 square feet of net clear area and a 36-inch horizontal projection, and anything deeper than 44 inches needs a ladder whose rungs run at least 12 inches wide, project 3 inches, sit no more than 18 inches apart, and start within 18 inches of the well floor. A ladder is allowed to eat up to 6 inches of the well’s required dimensions, which is the detail that catches people who buy a minimum-sized well.

What actually changes here is the process. Ankeny asks for about five working days to review a residential application, wants 48 hours of notice for inspections, and requires a rough-in inspection while the opening is open plus a final. Its residential permit fees are calculated on project valuation rather than charged as a flat figure, so the number moves with the job. We file, book both inspections, and itemize the fee at cost on the quote. The city’s design criteria, worth knowing before anyone digs, put the frost line at 42 inches.

The wells here fail for a young-house reason

Almost nothing in Ankeny is old enough to have worn out, so the typical drainage problem here is the opposite kind: original backfill that is still consolidating. Trenches around a foundation take years to settle, and when they do, the grade that left the builder pitched away from the house quietly reverses. In spring, wells commonly collect water not because the well is wrong but because the ground around it now slopes inward.

The second young-house pattern is discharge. Downspout extensions and sump lines that were routed to a convenient spot at closing frequently end up putting water within a few feet of a window well. Fixing that costs almost nothing compared to what it does. On Ankeny service calls we look at grade and discharge before we look at gravel, and often the drainage work that solves the problem is more shovel than material.

Radon belongs in the same conversation. Polk County, like every one of Iowa’s 99 counties, is an EPA radon Zone 1 county, Iowa Health and Human Services reports that EPA surveys found roughly 7 in 10 Iowa homes above the 4 pCi/L action level, and mitigation systems are standard on basement finishes here. Radon work and egress work do not conflict. Do the cutting first, since it is the messy step, and let the drywall follow both.

Before you list the house

A large share of Ankeny’s resale inventory is advertised with a basement bedroom, and a large share of those rooms were finished by an owner around the single opening the builder provided. A buyer’s inspector finds that quickly, and appraisers only credit conforming rooms, so the bedroom count in the listing does not survive contact with the transaction. Sorting it out before you list is a scheduled project. Sorting it out afterward is a repair addendum on somebody else’s clock, which is what code compliance upgrades are usually racing.

Book an Ankeny measure

Whether you are finishing a basement, fixing a room an inspector flagged, or dealing with a well that has held water since March, send the form with a photo of the wall or the well. The measure is free, the quote is flat, and the Ankeny permit is filed for you. We also work in Johnston, Urbandale, West Des Moines, and Des Moines proper. If your basement turns out to need nothing more than a new window in the existing opening, that is what the measure will say. Cutting and installation are done by independent local contractors; ask for their Iowa registration and insurance.