Cost of upgrading home to wind standards ?... (Miami: real estate, insurance)

[dbay]

I'm sure some of you posters have have had your homes upgraded to current
building standards for wind damage protection...
Could you give us an Idea of about what it costs to do a 3 bed home?.....

[Synergy1]

Our home was built in 2004 and we selected metal shutters. They cost us $1,800 installed. They do work well for our 4bed, 3bth and 2cg home..

We have 2 doors that are glass. The dual front and the 3rd bathroom. All doors that were not covered with shutters have a solid steel door to replace the glass ones. I believe the doors cost $375 and $250 and we purchased electronic locks separate and got the locks matched to our entire home keying. All of our doors have an electronic locking system and are really espensive but a regular manual lock will work great. Consider $100 / lock / door for a regular door lock... Good luck....

[dbay]

Thanks...How about your roof supports?...did you install metal brackets linking the beams?..

[Synergy1]

Metal "brackets" or metal straps was a standard feature when our home was built because the new homes had to withstand a max of 140 mph. The metal shutters cover the windows and some homes have tempered glass that heavy glass and withstands stong winds. The home doesn't need to be "closed in" and I am currently exchanging 2 metal shutters with clear hurricane rated shutters. That way we can see outside when the home is enclosed. The tempered glass is very expensive to have the entire home fitted. We had our sitting area fitted with tempered glass and it costs us $900 for 3 16x42h" glass panes to be professionally installed. We have 18 regular up-n-down windows in our home and temperered glass was just too expensive fo rus to have installed.

Shingles must able to withstand the same mph wind and are special 3 tabbed.
The metal brackets link from the roof trusses to the foundation and if the "brackets" just tie in with the sidewalls they can pull away from the home during stong winds. Our home had 3 roof shingles rip during 140mph wind that was blowing on our home for a tad over 1 hour. We also had approximately 80-110 mph winds blowing for 4 hours.

The metal straps that tie the trusses to the foundation go from the trusses to sunken bolts in the foundation every 16"-18" or so. I am not positive but our home was built that way and we built it as we were still living in Newtown Square, PA, so we really didn't get a close look at the home during its construction phases until the roof was on our home.

[dbay]

That's interesting, I didn't realize the straps were tied into the foundation...I guess the nice thing about
a newer home is that its built to Miami-Dade wind standards..what is scary is if you got the sheet rock
from China....

[cooldog5472]

We just purchesed a waterfront home last friday and the insurance company required a wind mitigation inspection. It only cost $75 but found two things that raised the cost of our wind insurance. First the sheething on the roof trusses was nailed every 12 inches with 6 penny nails. The insurance would have been much cheaper if they had nailed every 6 inches with 8 penny nails. Since we have a good metal roof and no plans to tear it off at this time that problem can not be upgraded and we have to live with it.
The second big thing is our garage door was not a hurricane door. This also costs us a big increase in wind insurance costs. That I can upgrade to bring the costs of the insurance down by either repolacing the entire door or adding hurricane braces behind the door.
We will be going down to the house for the first time next weekend (Nov 14th) and I will start looking into it then.
Before I start my improvements I need to know how the house was built so I will be going to St Lucie county and paying them a fee to pull all the records from the building department from when the house was constructed. The plans and all the building inspection reports should be there on file. This will tell me what code the house was built under and prove to the insurance company that it was inspected and passed to those codes.

[Synergy1]

The PSL web site Property Appraiser - St.Lucie County, FL can be accessed by anyone with a computer. This site will take you directly to Real Estate where you access Home Address and see what your home currently has and was approved to build. Put in your last name or your address and it will take you to the most recent homeowner and it may be a good idea to just put in your address because IT may not have updated your info as of today.

[dbay]

Do you have any Idea how much more your insurance will be with the roof not at current standards?
Just wondering because most older homes would not pass that test..The garage fix should not be such
a big deal...

[cooldog5472]

Originally Posted by dbay

Do you have any Idea how much more your insurance will be with the roof not at current standards?
Just wondering because most older homes would not pass that test..The garage fix should not be such
a big deal...

The roof was about $100 more a year however upgrading the garage door will save about $400 a year as when the garage door gets blown in the roof can then lift off.

[dbay]

Thanks....