Scotty from Houston area here. Looks like Dean will miss us, but it got me thinking that hurricae shutters might be a nice project for the second floor of the house. I was wondering if anyone out there had guidelines for 1) construction (building your own) vs. 2) buying shutters and 3) installing them.
Thanks,
Scott
Replies
Here in LA (Lower Alabama), the recommended hurricane shutters are 1/2 or 3/4 plywood screwed to the frame. I have a friend on the Mississippi coast who uses a commercial aluminium plate hurricane shutter, I believe he said they were 1" thick. Survived the direct hit from katrina. I think his was just about the only house in the area left standing.
I am thinking about adding roll down shutters to the artist studio I am in the process of designing. My area (Oregon) doesn't have hurricanes and I don't even recall a tornado in my area, but I am in an area with period wildfires from which I hope the shutters will minimize the possibility of burning the building down (along with other fire resistant construction).
There are several vendors of the roll down shutters, almost all of which seem to be Florida. They are primarily designed for hurricane protection but also can contain insulation and are used for securing storefronts in areas where vandalism is common.
If you do a web search on "roll down shutters" or "storm shutters", you should get a lot of potential vendors. They are not as cheap as plywood, but aren't as expensive as I thought they might be (don't recall the cost off hand.)
These were a couple that popped up on Google (I know nothing about any of these companies):
http://www.hurricaneshuttersflorida.com/flashutter/products.html
http://www.alutech.com/
http://www.roll-a-way.com/gallery/gallery_list.html
I saw some simple Lexan deals in the Bahamas. A lexan track was screwed to the sill and head piece, and the shutter just slides in. Someone's got it in for me, they're planting stories in the press
Whoever it is I wish they'd cut it out but when they will I can only guess.
They say I shot a man named Gray and took his wife to Italy,
She inherited a million bucks and when she died it came to me.
I can't help it if I'm lucky.
Here in south Florida we have just about any type hurricane shutter you can imagine and probably some you can't. 1/2' ply is always a favorite until you have to store them. Next in price and popularity is probably corrugated steel or aluminum panels that attached to your house with various styles of tracks. Then come the roll ups, manual and electric. Now we have lexan panels, kevlar fabric and even hurricane rated screens. Long term the best bet is probably impact resistant glass windows.