The weather is a dangerous foe and being unprepared for what our planet can throw at you can have disastrous consequences. Keeping your home’s windows up to date can be the difference between safety and injury. Luckily, you can replace those old windows and doors with high impact counterparts.
What Are High Impact Products?
High impact products are typically glass and provide a higher resistant to impact that you may experience from debris from weather or a burglary. You can find these used in glass door systems, like sliding glass doors, to high impact windows.
The method used comprises of a single interlayer that is placed between two panes of glass. When the outer, or inner, glass is shattered, the interlayer has a high resistance to being puncture, increasing the likelihood that the opposite side does not also break.
Protection From Storms
As one would imagine, this method has proven to be an excellent choice in reducing the likelihood that glass will be flying around your house if you are unlucky enough to be in a serious storm. Not only are they there to provide protection, sometimes it is a requirement depending on where you live. For example, if you live within a mile off the coast of Florida, according to the FBC, or Florida Building Code, your home is required to have impact-resistant products, like a high impact glass door system or windows. This is due to the wind speeds reaching 110 mph or more! You should shop around and find the right glass door systems and windows because it just so happens that some have impact-resistant glazing systems, that are +105/-130, can actually withstand hurricanes battering them at 100 mph. But that is only the beginning.
Not only are hurricanes a concern, but tornadoes are a common afterthought. Even after days of a hurricane’s landfall, any tornadoes you witness or experience might seem unrelated, but are most likely a result of the previous hurricane. Hurricanes can birth tornadoes, in fact, individuals that witnessed Hurricane Andrew in 1992, actually saw 62 tornadoes being born.
And poor Florida, hit by 57 hurricanes in the 20th century, with Texas behind at 26, out of a total of 158 hurricanes that made their presence known in the United States. It is the constant bombardment of weather that Florida experiences that leads to condos actually needing public inspections every 40 years.
One of the many good choices you can make protecting your home, and more importantly, yourself and your family during a storm, is investing in replacing those old windows for some hurricane impact doors and hurricane resistant windows.