As the frequency and intensity of hurricanes increases, protecting your home from their damaging effects is more important than ever. There is no single step you can take to guarantee that your house will weather a severe storm without damage, but a comprehensive plan can help to reduce the odds of expensive repairs or a total loss following a hurricane. More importantly, adequately protecting your home will also help to protect your family if a storm strikes suddenly, or you are unable to evacuate for any reason. Planning to protect your home means implementing a multi-layer defense, and hurricane shutters can form a crucial layer in this plan.
Understanding Your Vulnerabilities
In any storm, your doors and windows are the most vulnerable parts of your home. Broken or shattered glass presents a significant hazard to anyone located inside the house. During a storm, airborne debris can easily damage or shatter windows. Breakages such as this can happen even when you don't expect them, as gusts can appear suddenly. Your home's envelope is also compromised as soon as a window is broken, allowing rain and debris to enter your home and cause additional havoc. Even worse, these breakages expose anyone sheltering inside the house to the full intensity of the storm.
In addition to windows and doors, your roof is another major weak point. Wind blowing over your roof creates a pressure differential between the air above the roof and below it. As this happens, the higher pressure air below your roof creates an upward acting force that can potentially rip the roof from the house. Not only is this a wildly expensive problem to repair, but it also removes a critical structural component, weakening your home's walls in the process.
Planning to Address Your Vulnerabilities
Assessing your home's vulnerabilities to hurricane damage is the first step to keeping your house and your family safe during a storm. Once you understand where the dangers lie, your plan should attempt to do two things:
You can reduce the risk to your home from a storm primarily by identifying potential sources of damage on your property. Are there trees that can potentially fall on your home during a storm? Are there many loose objects that may become flying projectiles? It is not always possible to fully secure your property, but it is essential to identify these risks so that you can minimize the threat that they pose once you know a storm is on its way. Simply trimming branches and securing loose objects can significantly reduce the risk to your home.
Reinforcing weak areas is a more involved but equally critical part of any thorough hurricane plan. Permanent and semi-permanent options exist to protect vulnerable parts of your home. These include roof braces, garage door bracing kits, and hurricane shutters. In a pinch, boarding up windows and doors is helpful if no other options are available.
Why Hurricane Shutters Are So Important
While there are many steps you can take to reinforce the weak parts of your home, few are as effective as well-built hurricane shutters. Shutters come in a variety of styles and types to fit your budget and your specific needs. Semi-permanent shutters are installed and removed as needed, while permanent fixtures remain attached to your home and can be deployed before a storm. Likewise, shutters offer varying levels of impact protection. All shutters will prevent debris from entering your house, keeping your home's envelope secure during a storm, but some may offer more or less protection for the windows and doors they cover.
Developing a complete plan for hurricane protection requires many steps, but getting hurricane shutters should always be high on your priority list. By using these essential protective devices to cover your doors and windows, you help to guarantee that the interior of your home will remain as safe as possible during intense storms.
Share28 October 2019
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