Covering Glass Doors for Hurricane

I posted before and didn't get an answer. Does anyone have any suggestions about how to cover double glass doors (four doors total, all together). Because of the concrete lintelle at the top, we cannot get screws to go in far enough to hold. The house was built in 1983 - and there must be lots of other people with this same problem. We can screw plywood to the sides - but not across the top and that still leaves those two doors exposed.

Help please - there's another hurricane brewing and we need to be better prepared.

Dorothy

Reply to
Dorot29701
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suggestions

Add a 2x4 top and bottom rail over the plywood, held into the wood verticals with skinny lag screws. Steel U-channel would work better, if you can find any in the stores with a recent and a pending storm.

Really hard to make recommendations w/o seeing the door in question. Every frame and surround is a little different. And just as advice to others who may be building (or rebuilding, if you got nailed)- If you live in hurricane country, best to take this into account when designing the door and window openings. If budget and storage space allow, hard-mount points (preinstalled bolt sockets) for hurricane shutters, or rails to slide plywood or corrugated steel into, or whatever your contractor can come up with, are a real timesaver when a blow comes up. If you have space to store pre-made shutters, that saves you from the shortages and price-gouging, too. There is a reason old tropical buildings had functional storm shutters on all the outside openings.

aem sends...

Reply to
ameijers

use something like a 2x4 or 2x6 and screw it to both sides, across the top.

randy

suggestions

Reply to
xrongor

If it is concrete get a ramset and put in some threaded studs keep a screw on them so in case a thread is damaged you can fix it taking the nut off

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Wayne

Reply to
Wayne

Few people seem to coldly analyze the rotten economics of this stuff.

The probability of a storm striking strong enough to damage your windows but not the roof or rest of your structure, times the probability of the storm strength being in the rather narrow range where the covers provide protection instead of blowing off anyway, times the probability that you have the protection up and ready for this exceedingly rare storm, times the probability that your installation or design are not defective, times the cost to repair exactly that narrow type of damage, times the depreciation factor for the age of the replaced material, is the MOST you can expect to save with all your effort.

Given the true cost of acquiring and installing these shields initially, plus the many false alarms of putting them up and taking them down, plus the depreciation for the apparatus wearing out or decaying, plus the cost of space to store the things when not in use, makes these things EXPENSIVE.

In short, my hunch is, IT AIN'T WORTH IT. GO NAKED.

Ask yourself, why don't we wear helmets in passenger airliners?

Reply to
Richard J Kinch

clipped

Shutters on our condo - six glass areas, two of which are triple sliders

- cost around $1300. When the neighbor's trash can comes blowing along and tries to come through my window, I will be ok. It is more likely for roofs to come off when the side walls have been opened, but it's worth it just to keep the rain out if one window breaks. We did plywood one year, but have nowhere to store it.

The only reason I'm sitting where I am and typing this is because Hurricane Charley took a right turn. One of the hospitals with heavy damage had a wind guage that clocked 180 mph - not much withstands a cat

5, but up to a cat 4 we have a chance.
Reply to
Norminn

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