The questions people actually ask

No. The requirement attaches to rooms used for sleeping, and to basements with habitable space, not to every opening in the wall. A laundry room does not need one. A bedroom does, and that is true whether or not anyone calls it a bedroom on the floor plan.

No, but it costs more. The window still goes in the same wall; what changes is that someone has to open up finished surfaces to get to it and put them back afterwards. If a basement remodel is on your horizon at all, doing the egress work first is the cheaper order.

Glass block is not an exit. It is fixed, it does not open, and no arrangement of it satisfies a net clear opening requirement. It is a reasonable choice for a window you only want light and security from, and it is not a choice at all for a room someone sleeps in.

Cutting a hole in a load-bearing wall changes how the load travels, which is exactly why the opening gets a header and why the work is not a DIY step. Done properly the wall is fine; done by someone improvising, it is the most expensive mistake available on this project. This is the single strongest argument for hiring out the cutting even if you do the rest.

A window well is a hole that collects water against your foundation, so it either drains or it becomes a bucket. Draining means tying into the footing drain or running a vertical drain down to it, backfilled with gravel rather than the soil that came out. Skipping that is what shows up two winters later as a damp wall, and it is the step do-it-yourself installs most often get wrong.

Code does not require one, but a well without a cover collects rain, leaves and, in some places, small animals. A cover has to be removable from inside without tools or special knowledge: a cover that someone cannot push off in an emergency defeats the entire purpose of the window underneath it.

Usually, because the work cuts a structural wall and changes how a room is classified. Call the building department of the city or county the house sits in and ask. Ask at the same time which net clear opening they apply, because that number decides which windows you can even consider, and it varies.

The local authority having jurisdiction, not the state and not the manufacturer. Model codes like the IRC are adopted and amended locally, so two counties an hour apart can apply different thresholds to the same window.

You should, and it is free. Call 811 before any excavation. A window well is dug tight against the foundation, exactly where services tend to run, and finding a gas line with a spade is not a story you want.

The window does not mind. Frozen ground does. Excavating against a foundation in a Minnesota or Ohio January means either waiting or paying for equipment that would not be needed in September. Contractors in cold states will quote you differently for it, so ask before you plan around a date.

It can, and it often has to on a tight lot, but the well still has to be reachable and the cover still has to open. A well someone cannot climb out of because there is a deck joist overhead is not an exit, whatever its dimensions say.

More than people expect, because the comparison is usually against a hopper window a fraction of the size. We are not going to put a number on it: it depends on the orientation, the depth of the well and what the well is lined with. A light-coloured well liner makes a visible difference for very little money.