TAMPA, Fla. — New construction in Florida is built to specific codes to protect homes from hurricanes, but upgrading and retrofitting an older home isn't difficult.
At the start of the 2024 hurricane season, ABC Action News reporter Michael Paluska sought advice from the industry's top experts.
We watched as Habitat for Humanity of Pinellas and West Pasco Counties hurricane-proofed their roofs.
AtPGT Custom Windows and Doors, we got an up-close demonstration of how their impact windows work.
Let's start with Kyle Mishler, the owner and founder of KAM Roofing Services. Mishler shows us the hurricane clips you will need to retrofit your roof to help secure it better against hurricane-force winds.
"Once the roof goes off, everything on the inside is going with it," Mishler said. Mishler is the preferred roofing vendor for Habitat for Humanity of Pinellas and West Pasco Counties.
"It's a twist clip," Mishler said. "This hurricane clip will go on the wall. And then the wood rafter would get nailed into here. You got three nails here, and then the three nails here. Now, the tensile strength of this is here. After Michael (a major category five hurricane) came through in the Panhandle, I saw what it looked like with a nonprotected home and a home with something like this. Two neighbors; one brand new roof with the newer updated codes at the time, the roof was intact. And then one right next door that was due to replace his roof, completely gone, ripping out all this drywall inside the house. Just pure devastation."
During Hurricane Michael, parts of Panama City were leveled. In one neighborhood, a satellite image showed five shining roofs surrounded by a field of debris. Habitat for Humanity built those five homes.
"That's exactly why we have it quality controlled," Jordan Gibson, VP of Construction for Habitat for Humanity Pinellas and West Pasco Counties, said. "Our garage doors are rated for hurricane winds; we have impact windows, shutters, and hurricane-rated roof straps."
"So the weakest point of a home will fail first and potentially take the whole home?" Paluska asked Gibson.
"Absolutely, every single time," he said.
Gibson stresses that any upgrade should be done by a licensed professional and inspected to ensure every potential failure point is installed correctly.
One retrofit will save homeowners money on their insurance premiums. If you did all of the upgrades, like impact windows, storm shutters, etc.… you would get even more savings per year.
Back at PGT, we learned what happens after the window is smashed. The nine-pound 2X4 travels at 50 feet per second or 34mph as it splinters the glass.
"But there's plastic in the middle in between. So it's kind of like a glass sandwich," Lynn Miller, Code Compliance Manager at PGT Innovations, said. So this will break, but that plastic inside there will hold it together; then we have to put this on a wall with a blower behind it, basically pressurizes the backside of the window, and it'll apply pressure and release the pressure 4500 times. And then, and that's in one direction. And then after that it's complete, we take the product off the wall, flip it around, and suction again on the backside to simulate when the hurricane goes past the house; now you've got suction on the backside of the house."
"And if you pressurize the home, you can open it up to the roof getting ripped, correct having other windows get blown out?" Paluska asked.
"That's right, and then a catastrophic failure," Miller said.
Protecting your family is priority number one for every storm, whether it is a hurricane or not.
"I think the cost is outweighed by the benefit of knowing that your home is safe and secure. And that if anything happens, you have that insurance. And you also have that protection that the insurance will cover," Gibson said. "These small things can increase the viability of your home and the survivability of your home during a storm, and they are incredibly important."
A state report says hundreds of frail elderly nursing home residents were stacked side by side, head to toe in a small church with no working air conditioning or refrigerator during Hurricane Helene.
