If you live along the coastline, especially the southeastern or southern coastline, your home should have hurricane shutters installed.
If you do live in a hurricane zone, you should definitely install hurricane shutters. Hurricane shutters protect your home from extreme damaging winds.
These winds throw debris against your house at speeds exceeding 90 miles per hour. In particular, you want to prevent window breakage.
Your goal is to keep the wind outside. If high winds get inside your home or business, it becomes trapped. In reality, the pressure from wind continues to build as it stays in a structure. This can literally cause the winds to blow your house or business apart.
Some experts recommend install hurricane shutters if you live in an area that experiences tornadoes or other extreme high-wind weather. The problem with this is that tornados will literally lift a roof off a house, or a house off its foundation without ever blowing out a window! So while they can help prevent window breakage from flying debris, in reality it does little to fully protect your home. However, protecting your home is worth the investment.
If windows are broken during storms, you are likely to have water damage to rooms. This is expensive and time consuming to repair. More importantly, damage to irreplaceable family heirlooms and other invaluable items are not always reparable.
Hurricane shutters come in a wide variety of styles, including automatic ones that you lower with a touch of a button! Other styles include ones you manually close. Either type is easier and more time efficient that nailing plywood to your windows hours before the storm hit!
