2017 marks an exciting, worrying, and all around powerful moment in hurricane activity. Now, more than ever, you should be looking at how hurricane readiness fits within your lifestyle. How sturdy is your home? How useful is your life, homeowner's, renter's, car, or any other insurance in the event of a storm? Do you have multiple escape routes? The core of these questions start at your home and yard, and a few renovation points can help you boost your home's storm preparedness potential.
Window Protection For Debris Control
Many storm conditions can create dangerous, high speed debris situations even before reaching tornado and hurricane severity. High winds that can throw boards, vinyl siding, small pieces of construction equipment, baseballs, and many other projectiles can quickly become your problem with little warning. In fact, the only warning you'll receive is that the wind exists at all.
This is a good time to upgrade your windows and add storm shutters. Impact-resistant windows--often called hurricane-grade or storm windows--are designs to shatter in a specific way that won't create sharp shards of glass on impact.
That's your major concern here. It isn't to create the most powerful window that can withstand any impact; your job is to make sure that when an impact finally happens, your household won't be threatened by slicing glass going at the speed of impact.
To protect against impact, storm shutters are what you need. These shutters are installed outside of the home like any other set of shutters, but they are reinforced to withstand the impact of a storm. Shutter anchors should be drilled into the home to prevent a category 5 hurricane or F-5 tornado from ripping the shutters away.
Flood Mitigation And Redirection
Some areas are always a flooding concern, but as many people learned in Houston, some areas that rarely get heavy rainfall can suddenly become a disaster zone. There's nothing you can do against historically high flood waters without warning, but there are a few things that can protect you against known flooding events.
Know your area's flood potential. If you own your home, you should have received some deed information about where your home is in relation to the flood plain. If not, your local government zoning offices, building development companies, or emergency response professionals can either give you an answer or direct you to the right office in your area.
When you find out the flooding potential in your area, you should also ask about proper sandbag placement and draining options. You can't simply dig trenches or moats in any way you please; most yards aren't big enough to create a big enough difference, and some extreme changes could affect your neighbors. If you save your home while causing others to lose theirs, you could face legal challenges and still lose everything.
Contact a home renovation professional and discuss your storm concerns to find accurate, safe, and legal upgrades for your home. Visit a site like 215build.com for more help.
Share9 September 2017
After I started focusing seriously on making my home look and feel brand new, it occurred to me that I needed to do something to make things even better. I started working with a team of remodeling contractors, and although I didn't always understand their decisions, it became apparent pretty quickly that they understood what they were doing. They worked with us each and every day to make things right, and I was really impressed with their level of professionalism. Check out this blog for great information on understanding remodeling decisions each and every time you complete a new project.
