Window Well Cost Calculator

Window well work covers four very different jobs at four very different prices, and most people searching for a number do not know which one they need yet. This calculator prices all four from the same pricing page ranges: full replacement, relining, drainage, and covers.

The one input that surprises people is the flooding question. A well that holds standing water is not a well problem, it is a drainage problem wearing a well as a hat, and rebuilding the gravel column under the well is what determines whether the new one lasts twenty-five years or five. In Fort Collins that matters more than in most places. The Colorado Geological Survey’s map of the Fort Collins quadrangle puts the city over the Pierre Shale and lists swelling and collapsing soils over that shale as one of the area’s two most common natural hazards. Those clays hold water and silt a gravel bed from the inside, and the survey says they can swell up to 20 percent by volume when wet. A well set in native clay with a token scoop of rock under it is a bucket by its tenth spring. It is also the one thing nobody can quote from a photograph, which is why the on-site measure exists and why it is free.

Reading your own well before you call

• Screwdriver at the soil line. Solid steel under the scale means a liner is on the table. Perforated steel means replacement. The rusted well page has the full test.
• Tape across the face and out from the wall. Code wants at least 9 square feet of horizontal area and at least 36 inches of projection on an egress well, and a ladder may encroach only 6 inches into that.
• Depth from grade to the bottom. Past 44 inches, a permanent ladder or steps is required on a bedroom well. On a 30-inch frost line, most are.
• Straightedge across the rim. A rim gone oval means the clay has pushed the shell past its strength, and the caving well page explains why that is a replacement, not a repair.
• Watch it in the March melt. Standing water for days is the drainage answer, and the flooding page explains why that happens here specifically.

What is not in the number

The permit. The City of Fort Collins lists window replacement and new openings as permitted work and charges by valuation, which lands a typical well job at $150 to $300; the county and the other towns run $150 to $600. It shows on the quote as its own line at cost. A cover alone or a drainage rebuild on an existing well usually needs no permit, and we will say which on the call rather than pad the number.

Send the estimate to the form when you are done and the measure gets booked with the scope already understood. If the window inside the well is also undersized for a bedroom, the egress cost calculator prices that larger job instead, and the covers and drainage page covers the smaller ones.