Seeing all the pictures of homes boarded up for hurricane Irene brought up this question.
After the hurricane passes do people store the plywood in the basement for next time? Do they have some kind of reusable fastener or do they just pound new nails in the house?
Why don’t they use real storm shutters that are permanently on the house? Why fool with plywood at all? It takes a lot of plywood to board up every window. Plus the damage from large nails.
I always thought that roll down shutters like the security shutters in businesses were the best idea all around.
If we luck out and can buy back my grandparent’s summer house, one of the first things we are planning to do is install them all around as part of the window update/insulation update. [not that a small lake in western NY is in danger of hurricanes, mind you. It is more that they would provide a modicum of protection during blizzards, and also when we are away from the place in the winter on vacations. It is not entirely unknown for ice fishers to break into cottages to get warm and whatnot.]
One of the things I really liked about my friends flat in Germany was the windows - they had outside blinds like venetians that rolled up or down, and when down closed like a security shutter. I don’t think you can find them in the US, anybody I ever asked about them thought I was insane and had never heard of them.
What we did when I was a kid in Houston was to set some sort of anchor into the brickwork on both sides of each window, and then made custom-cut plywood pieces for each window that we could bolt onto the anchors and cover our windows that way.
Our neighbors didn’t envy much we had, but they sure envied those window covers when there was a storm in the Gulf, and about 2 days out, Dad and I would just go out, and in 15 minutes, bolt the covers over all the windows and go back inside, instead of spending hours cutting plywood and trying to fit it over the windows somehow, and ending up taping the windows instead, like they did.
Further south than Houston, they do use covers- my grandmother has these louvered steel window cover things that let in plenty of light, but when there’s a storm, she just cranks them down, and her house is like a small fortress.
I always wondered that since hurricane-prone areas are so humid, would the plywood warp beyond use if stored between storms?
When my parents lived in hurricane areas (coast of Florida, coast of NC), my father had plywood window covers that he made that sort of fit into the windows and could be nailed in. He stored them and used the same ones when needed. I guess (some) people don’t use real storm shutters because they’re pretty pricey. Probably a good investment if you live in the Outer Banks, but maybe not such a good investment if your area doesn’t get routinely hammered.
When my husband and I lived in a hurricane area (coast of SC, 2 blocks from the beach), we just put tape on the windows to keep them from spraying glass everywhere if they shattered. We are totally not as MacGyvery as my dad, though, and we generally got out of Dodge for anything bigger than a Cat 1.