Egress Window Installation in Huntley, Montana

We install code-compliant egress windows in Huntley (concrete cutting, IRC R310 windows, wells, and drainage) about 20 minutes east of our Billings hub via I-94 and Highway 312, just past Shepherd and before Worden. Huntley is unincorporated Yellowstone County: no residential building permit, no inspection, and a water table that a Billings Heights contractor has never had to think about. We build to the same 5.7 square foot, 24-by-20, 44-inch-sill numbers here that we build to for a city inspector, and we build the drainage for the ground Huntley actually sits on.

Huntley’s housing, from an egress point of view

Huntley exists because of water. The Bureau of Reclamation started the Huntley Project in 1905 on former Crow Reservation land, and the railroad towns of Huntley, Ballantine, Worden, and Pompeys Pillar followed in 1907. The town’s original site on the north bank was largely destroyed in the 1937 Yellowstone flood, damage the record calls more extensive, percentage-wise, than in any other community in the region, and Huntley rebuilt on the higher south bank. The economy is still sugar beets, corn, wheat, and barley, and the Huntley Project K-12 district serves the whole east end of the valley.

The 2020 census counted 442 people in the CDP, but the housing that calls us is spread across the project:

• Older farmhouses and project-era homes: block and early poured foundations with small original windows. Openings here get enlarged rather than freshly cut, and block often prices toward the low end of the $3,500 to $6,500 range.
• Newer subdivisions: Huntley has added them as Billings commuters look east for land, and those poured basements were sold unfinished. Lower levels get finished into bedrooms; when the house sells, the inspector measures the window. See code compliance upgrades.
• Acreages with horses and outbuildings: open lots, machine access on almost every side yard, which keeps excavation efficient.

Soil and water on the Huntley Project

This is the part a Billings-only contractor gets wrong. The USDA soil survey for Yellowstone County maps the Haverson association along the Yellowstone flood plain and terraces, and says plainly that on the flood plains the water table is within 60 inches of the surface and the soils are flooded when snow melts in spring. Above the flood plain, the McRae-Lohmiller-Keiser terraces northeast of Shepherd and Huntley are deep loams to silty clays over clay. And the whole project is irrigated: canals, laterals, and flood-irrigated fields raise the shallow water table every summer, exactly when a Billings well is at its driest.

So the drainage under a Huntley well is designed differently. A washed-gravel bed below the 36-inch frost depth, wrapped in geotextile so the silty clay cannot choke it, tied into a working footing drain where one exists. Where it does not, a dry well sized for a July irrigation set as well as an April thaw. Downspouts extended well past the well, grade pulled back from the house. On the lowest lots we will tell you honestly if a below-grade well is fighting the water table, and whether a higher opening on a different wall is the better answer. The covers and drainage page covers the build; well installation covers the well.

Permits in Huntley

Same story as Shepherd and Lockwood. The City of Billings FAQ sends everything outside city limits to the State of Montana, the state Building Codes Program exempts residential buildings under five units, and Yellowstone County has no building program. No building permit, no plan review, no final for an egress cut on a Huntley house. State permits still apply to electrical, plumbing, and mechanical work in the finish. We are the only check on the opening until your buyer’s inspector shows up, so we build to Montana’s adopted 2021 IRC R310 and put the net clear opening math on the quote.

Timing a Huntley project

Dig season runs roughly March through November, and on the lowest lots we prefer late summer, after the spring water table drops and before the ground freezes. With no permit wait, a signed quote can turn into an excavation inside a week in season. Window swaps in existing openings run year-round.

The full job is the same flat-quote egress installation we run from Billings out to Shepherd, Lockwood, Laurel, and Columbus, with prices on the pricing page. Book the free measure and tell us how close the nearest ditch is; it changes the drainage plan, and we would rather know before the dig.