Should You Buy Hurricane Impact Windows for Your Home?

There are several options you can consider to protect your home against tornadoes and hurricanes. You can add shutters, apply window film, put up protective plywood, or install HURRICANE IMPACT WINDOWS. Though none of these devices is one hundred percent foolproof, you can be sure that they will provide at least some measure of protection, which is much, much better than having none at all.

Testing Durability

When it comes to hurricane or storm windows, one of the best benchmarks for strength, effectiveness, and quality testing is the hurricane impact test of Miami-Dade County in Florida. What this test measures is how well a product -- in this case, hurricane windows -- survive the impact of such a weather disturbance. It does not guarantee in any way that the windows will emerge undamaged from a hurricane.

If extremely strong winds enter a building, the risk of damage is so much greater. This is where hurricane impact windows come in. They are designed to be resistant to both strong winds as well as debris that are thrown about during a hurricane. Since they cover a building's openings, deflecting the strength of the wind and preventing it from entering, they play a major role in protecting the structural skeleton of your house or business location. This is important because it is easier to rebuild or fix a building whose basic structure is still standing.

You might be wondering how windows are tested for their resistance to wind and projectiles. The Miami-Dade County test evaluates a product's resistance to large and small projectiles or "missiles." A window is deemed to be large projectile-resistant after it has been subjected to several impacts with a piece of wood of a certain size and weighing about nine pounds, and moving at a speed of 34 miles per hour or 50 feet every second.  The product is also subjected to a test involving positive and negative wind loads for 9,000 cycles. It passes the test if any resulting holes in the glass interlayer do not exceed a specified size.

Testing for small missile-resistance is similar, except that ten ball bearings traveling at a speed of 50 miles per hour or 80 feet per second are used instead of a piece of lumber moving at a slower speed.

Cost

You may be wondering about the price of hurricane impact windows. It may vary from manufacturer to manufacturer, but generally speaking, they are definitely more expensive than normal windows. But if you consider the fact that they can help protect your property -- not to mention your own safety and that of your family -- then the cost of buying and installing them is more than worth it. That said, you can certainly scout around for suppliers that offer these types of windows at competitive prices.

Just be sure that you obtain proof that the storm windows you are planning to buy have passed compliance codes or other relevant criteria. You should also buy only products that are appropriate for your geographical location. If you live in Florida or in another coastal area in the USA, your hurricane impact windows should pass standards for wind speeds of at least 110 miles per hour.