Egress Window Installation in Lockwood, Montana

We install code-compliant egress windows in Lockwood (concrete cutting, IRC R310 windows, wells, and drainage) about ten minutes from our Billings hub, across the Yellowstone River off I-90. Lockwood is the one place near Billings where the permit conversation is short: there is no residential building permit here, so the schedule runs from signed quote straight to the dig. What does not change is the build. Every opening we cut in Lockwood meets the same 5.7 square foot, 24-by-20, 44-inch-sill numbers we build to inside the city, because the buyer’s inspector does not care which side of the river the house is on.

Lockwood’s housing, from an egress point of view

Lockwood is the second-largest community in the Billings metro and has never been a city. It is a census-designated place of about 12.9 square miles with 7,195 people at the 2020 census, and it grew 57.8 percent between 2000 and 2010, one of the fastest rates in Montana, before settling to about 6 percent growth in the 2010s. It has its own K-12 school district and its own identity, and no city hall.

That growth pattern shows in the foundations:

• Older homes along Old Hardin Road and near the river: post-war ranches and 1960s and 1970s houses with full basements, small original windows, and corrugated wells at end of life.
• The subdivision boom of the 1990s and 2000s: poured walls, unfinished lower levels sold as “future bedrooms,” and a lot of them since finished without anyone measuring the window. When those homes sell, inspectors flag the rooms. See code compliance upgrades.
• Acreages and larger lots on the benches: room for a mini excavator on nearly every side yard, which keeps digs efficient and quotes toward the friendlier half of the $3,500 to $6,500 range on our pricing page.

Lockwood also has a lot of manufactured homes and slab-on-grade houses, which need none of this. If you are not sure whether your lower level is a basement wall or a crawl space, send a photo and we will tell you.

Water, soil, and the river

Lockwood sits on the Yellowstone. During the record June 2022 flood, when the river crested at 16.2 feet at Billings, residents were rescued from rising water on Island Park Road in Lockwood. Most of the community is well above the channel, but the lesson applies to every window well in the valley: the ground here is slow clay, the spring runoff is real, and a well without drainage holds water.

The USDA soil survey for Yellowstone County maps the flood plain soils along the Yellowstone with a water table within 60 inches of the surface, and the terraces above as silty clay loams and silty clays over stratified clay. Every well we set in Lockwood gets a washed-gravel bed below the 36-inch frost depth, wrapped in fabric, tied into a working footing drain or a dry well, with downspouts extended past it. The covers and drainage page covers the build. Lockwood also holds the county’s tornado record, an F3 in June 1965, which is a reminder that a cover has to be anchored, not just set on the well.

Permits in Lockwood: there are none, and that cuts both ways

The City of Billings’ own FAQ says the State of Montana governs the area outside city limits. The state’s Building Codes Program, in turn, exempts residential buildings with fewer than five dwelling units from state building permits, and Yellowstone County has no building program of its own. Result: no building permit, no plan review, no inspection for an egress cut on a Lockwood house. State permits still apply to electrical, plumbing, and mechanical work.

That saves you a fee and a week. It also means the only person who will ever check the opening is the inspector working for the next buyer, and the appraiser deciding whether the room counts. So we build to IRC R310 exactly as Montana adopted it in the 2021 residential code, document the net clear opening math on the quote, and size the lintel the same way we would for a Billings inspector. A Lockwood bid that is cheap because “there is no inspection out here” is cheap in the header or the drainage.

Timing a Lockwood project

No permit wait means Lockwood is where we can move fastest in season, roughly March through November. Fall fills with pre-listing work; a spring finish project is best measured in winter. Window swaps in existing openings run all year regardless of frost.

The full job, cut, window, well, drainage, inspection where one exists, is the same flat-quote process we run from Billings out to Laurel, Shepherd, Huntley, and Columbus. Lockwood is the shortest drive of the lot. Book the free measure and we will put a number on your wall this week.