- With hurricanes seemingly a way of life for Florida and much of the Southeast this season, many homeowners are reassessing their rituals for covering up the windows each time a storm threatens.
Many are deciding whether to upgrade protection for their homes, and thousands are considering how best to rebuild dwellings shattered by Charley, Frances, Ivan and now Jeanne. And hurricane season doesn't end until Nov. 30.
"Our house and shutters passed Ivan's test, but we found several things we'll do better before the next storm," said Lundy Wilder, whose Italianate concrete block vacation house in Gulf Shores, Ala., was right in the center of the hurricane's 130-mph winds at landfall.
"The composite shutters held up fine, but a couple of the cast-iron hinges holding them in place on the south (ocean facing) side snapped and we lost them on all four windows. So we're going to have to refit with stainless steel or aluminum," said Wilder, who lives in Memphis and who built the house with her husband Harry several years ago.
"The amazing thing is that not a single pane of glass was broken. We've got double-paned windows, but not impact-resistant. We had only a little water get in. We're planning on doing an addition, and we'll use the impact glass for sure then," she said.
Everyone living or working in a building subject to hurricane-force winds faces the same challenge - keeping the wind from getting inside. When high winds get inside a building, the sudden pressure tends to blow out other doors and windows, pop off roofs and flatten walls.
"You need to protect the total envelope of the home," said Stu Voigts, a product merchandise manager for Home Depot. "That means windows, doors, the garage doors and roof. If the 'skin' stays intact, the chance of the house staying intact is much greater."
"Hurricane clips" and other devices to keep roofs better attached to walls have become mandatory in most coastal communities, particularly since Hurricane Andrew devastated South Florida in 1992, and standards for window and door protection have evolved, too.
While winds of 100 mph or more can blow out a window, researchers have found that more often, flying debris shatters the glass, and the wind exploits the breech. There is small debris - like the gravel blown off a neighboring roof - and there is large debris.
The top building code standard is the "large missile impact test" - a 15-pound 2-by-4 board fired from a cannon into the target product - twice - and not leaving a hole more than three-inches across.
"There are a lot of products out there -window films and interior shutter panels and even some exterior shutters - that can't meet the large missile test, but may be okay against small missiles," said Nanette McElman, a Tampa engineer who works for Solutia, a St. Louis company that makes impact-resistant windows.
"There are countless examples in the wake of the recent hurricanes of buildings and homes that were flattened because the windows and doors were not protected with code-approved products. And some homes with protected windows were still standing right next door."
For most people along the coast, battening down for a hurricane still means boarding up - covering windows and doors with plywood at least 5/8th-inch thick and anchoring it securely.
There are numerous types of wood, metal and composite shutters available, ranging from storm panels that must be re-installed each time, to roll-down systems that can be lowered with the touch of a switch, or even by remote control. (Manual cranks are essential for these, however, since hurricanes often knock out power.)
While the roll-down styles are relatively easy, they're also pricey. "We had one supplier quote us a price of $12,000 just to do four windows with roll-downs, and that was a few years ago," Wilder recalled. "We ended up spending a lot less for shutters we have to go out and close."
McElman said the impact-resistant glass products are becoming more and more common in newer houses and for retrofits, even though the windows run about 30 percent more than regular windows.
"There are a lot of advantages to the windows in terms of reducing noise and glare, and security - they're burglar resistant, too," McElman said "But the best thing, to me, having just ridden out three hurricanes myself, is that they're always in place."
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