Panzerboy:

Called my brother late last night in Hollywood, FL and they didn't get touched at all.

He, wife and child did decide to bug out and came back home a few hours before I called.

He lucked out as he didn't have plywood and was depending on taped windows with cardboard covering.

I am going to have to send him some money so he has precut plywood sitting in his garage all the time and advise him to put threaded inserts in his window framing for easy and faster covering if he should need to do it again.

Bountyhunter

Anyone:

I have a question about covering windows and doors during these storms. Just how sealed up do you want the house to be?

I have friends in Orlando who had designed and made custom cut metal "shutters" for their house.

Yesterday was the first (and hopefully the last) time they had occasion to use them. These shutters are not permanet and are designed to put over the windows and French Doors by screwing them into the wood around the windows and glass doors.

My friend told me that during the highest part of the winds that the metal shutters would bow outward, and then relax, and force air back through the sealed doors. The draperies by those doors would billow out with the force.

Shouldn't there be some opening left when someone applies either wood or metal over windows and /or doors? I'm thinking that the objective is to simply protect the glass , not trying to seal off the opening.

Should air vents be put into the wood or metal coverings, or would this make them weaker?

There are many schools of thought on what will work in a hurricane; Many methods that are adequate and even amazingly effective in lower categories will only provide more fodder for the devastation evident in a Cat 5.

Best bet? Hire a structural engineer and get his recommendation. But that takes money I can't afford.

I definitely agree that precut, prefab, Just-Bolt-It-On shutters are much more desirable than trying to make them under the time constraint of an impending hurricane. Drawback: Have a place to store these things because you may only use them once or twice in a DECADE. This is only the second time I've had to sticky up my windows (We don't use tape...we use clear Shelf Paper because it goes on fast and comes off without leaving residue) since I've moved to FL back in 1990.

Given a choice, I'd have probably used some nifty clips I saw Home Depot selling years ago that allow a board to bite into the sides of inset windows...in my case, into mortar and stone, thus holding it in place. Haven't seen them in years however.

If you can afford it, protection is good. Have a place and a method to store the shutters long-term, however, without compromising rapid deployment (Rapid meaning full deployment in 4 hours or so) yet protecting the shutters from rust and rot is an absolute must.

Panz

Covering doors and especially windows serves two purposes: 1) keep windblown debris from breaking in, and 2) keeping high winds out.

If hurricane force winds enter most buildings, they have enough force to create their own exit, e.g., through the roof.

Most buildings are destroyed from the indside out, once a protective shell has been penetrated, e.g., a window has been broken out.

"Vents" in hurricane shutters have no benefits, and only serve to weaken the protective shell around a building.

Andrew went 60 miles south of me when I lived on the SE coast.

/Neal

Hey, Panz,

I'm just getting caught up with the posts after a week out of town, glad to hear you and Sarah made it through O.K. I'm hoping all our friends/fellow posters made it through with out any more than inconvenience, and prayers go out to those that didn't.

Troy

Regarding hurricane shutters:

Portion of NOAA Hurricane FAQs