Our recent story on plywood shutters illuminated the fact that there appears to be outdated (and certainly inconsistent information) about installing plywood shutters being indexed on highly prominent search engines on the Internet.
This month, you’ll see a lot more feature stories about plywood Hurricane Shutters on A Big Wind because we feel it’s one of the most useful things we can do to help people RIGHT NOW to protect their home or business. If you’re reading this web site then it means you are out on the Internet searching for Hurricane protection products and there’s a good chance that even if you order shutters or impact windows today, that they won’t be installed this season. That means that plywood may be the only option still available to protect your home or business in time for this season’s storms. According to FLASH.org (Federal Alliance for Safe Home), effective January 2005, Plywood has been tested to meet codes for a 130 mph wind.
Let’s put our recent story on plywood Hurricane shutters in context.
Four points:
1) Good or bad – due to their low relative cost plywood shutters are the most popular shutter solution around Hurricane Country for protecting your home and business.
2) People will use the Internet to find information about how to properly install plywood Hurricane Shutters.
3) People using the Internet will naturally trust known Hurricane experts like NOAA, the Red Cross, FEMA, and their local newspaper and T.V station to give them information on correct plywood Hurricane shutter installation.
4) The latest recommendations on plywood Hurricane shutter installation HAVE changed. People expect the Internet and Television to have the LATEST information vs. a book or other printed information that isn’t expected to have the same currency.
Point one: What Hurricane shutter solution will be the number one choice for the overwhelming majority of consumers and small businesses in Hurricane Country? Right – plywood. People either don’t have the money, resources or time to get more expensive steel shutters, impact windows or other solutions installed. Plus, the huge spike in demand for Hurricane protection products like shutters and impact windows have created long wait times this Hurricane season (typically 8-30 weeks). If you don’t already have your shutters or impact windows in place you’re going to be putting up plywood or you’ll be risking life and property unnecessarily.
Point two: 7 in 10 Internet searches will be performed using either Google or Yahoo! That’s why A Big Wind is very concerned that Google’s number one search result on a key word search for ‘Hurricane Shutters’ or more specifically ‘hurricane shutter installation’ turns up an outdated page that’s still running on NOAA’s servers as we detailed here in our past story. On Yahoo! the NOAA page is the number 5 result. Now keep in mind that when you go directly to NOAA’s web site they link to the more current shutter installation information that recommends that your plywood overlap the opening of your window or door, vs. the older inset method featured on the outdated page that still ‘lives’ on the web.
Point three: It’s not just the NOAA page. The Red Cross, another trusted source for Hurricane information has the newer overlap information but features a recommendation to drill holes in your plywood to deal with Hurricane pressures. Hmmmmm? Is this even a recommendation anymore? It is not mentioned in the very latest FEMA guidelines. And guess which prominent newspaper’s printed and online 2006 Hurricane Guide featured the old inset plywood installation method? The South Florida Sun-Sentinel whose latest guide goes on to say of plywood shutter installations
“If you decide to use this system, it is important to install the shutters correctly.” before mentioning the old inset installation method.
Yikes! Who has the correct facts here? I wonder if the Sun-Sentinel’s researchers ‘Googled’ their information and clicked on the number one search result link, naturally deferring to NOAA’s expert status in the Hurricane Field? And for all the criticism leveled at FEMA for their handling of Katrina we’re happy to report that FEMA has all the latest information on shutter installation on their web site and printed material. Further, FEMA is out publicizing this information at Hurricane expos and home shows like the Ft. Lauderdale Home Show that we recently attended. Our tax dollars at work I guess.
Point four: We’ve been through a lot of Hurricanes since Andrew. What’s changed in installer recommendations for plywood? Namely, you don’t see any recent references to drilling holes in your plywood and you don’t see contractors recommending the inset installation method. Though we’d still love to hear from an experienced engineer or contractor who can give us a good description on some of the differences between these methods. It’s great to know the latest info but it would be interesting to know WHY the installation procedures changed. Again, since plywood shutters are the MOST common method of protecting structures from Hurricane damage it’s something we should all know a lot more about.
As mentioned in our last story A Big Wind is contacting the organizations we’ve found publishing outdated information to ask them to validate their information or potentially update or take down old web site pages.
P.S. Want a great online tool that helps you quickly compare the cost and pros and cons of plywood vs. other Hurricane shutter or impact window solutions? Use the Shutter Tool that FLASH (Federal Alliance for Home Safety) has on their web site – we love it!
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Update: A Big Wind attended the Palm Beach Post sponsored Storm Expo 2006 today and had a chance to speak with FEMA officials about our questions on plywood shutter installation.
The short story as we learned from the FEMA reps is that 1) the information about drilling holes in your plywood to eleviate pressure from Hurricane force winds is out-of-date and no longer recommended. 2) The old information about installing shutters in window insets with lag bolts IS old but would be an effective (although no longer recommended) means of shuttering your structure with plywood.
One of the FEMA reps we spoke with had worked for The Red Cross for over 15 years and was familiar with the recommendations on plywood shuttering published by The Red Cross. The reason that public safety groups like The Red Cross and FEMA have started recommending the overlap method is that IT IS FASTER and just as effective. The reasoning goes that with ANY public safety issue, from giving CPR to putting up Hurricane Shutters, simpler is better. The overlap method of installing plywood shutters *is* easier to accomplish for those of us not gifted with the handyman gene and it takes less time even if you are good with a measuring tape, drill and hammer.
Update: Christopher Juckins with NOAA wrote back to us with this update:
“Thanks for writing the NHC. I spoke to our FEMA liason and you have a
good point. I am forwarding your email onto AOML / Hurricane Reasearch
Division as they host the page that you are inquiring about.
Thanks for letting us know.”
A Big Wind thanks Christopher for his quick action!
Update: We contacted Sun-Sentinel Blogger Josh Frank about our story and he’s alerted his editors about the issue. We’re hopeful that The Sun-Sentinel will update their information online.
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