a typical vinyl casement window will usually meet 5.0 square feet with a28"x42" actual window size with egress hardware.

Thanks toddinmm, do all casement windows open to the outside or is there an option to open it to the inside? our window well is only 36" deep so a 42" wide window will only fit if we widen the window well

Thanks Windows on Washington!! - the opening is 60" wide and 30" high. what is the widest casement window available?

A sliding window would work in that size, should give over 8.5 square feet.

Unless you can make the opening a little taller I don't think a casement will work. The slider would work best but it is not to hard to make the opening taller and it would only take an inch or so. You would have to use 2 Windows with a casement since max width is around 36"" . So 36" wide egress casement mulled to a 24" wide casement or deadlite.

The way window wells were explained to me was that I was to imagine a firefighter in full gear with an airtank on his back trying to get in and save property or worse get people out of that hole. I stood in the wells and considered them. Then I promptly made them bigger than the 3x3 we were set for our fire code. I will not use 5, even if it is minimum code.