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Why Protect Your Garage?
Unrecognized
by most homeowners (and unfortunately the media as well) is
the fact that the garage door is potentially the largest, weakest
opening of a residential home's exterior envelope to a hurricane.
Many people that are concerned about the safety of their homes
and families in hurricane conditions (even those that pay thousands
of dollars for window shutters and impact resistant windows)
fail to take any precautions to properly secure their garage
door. The Florida Alliance for Safe Homes has stated that "about
80 percent of residential hurricane wind damage starts with
wind entry through the garage door." According to the Federal
Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and the American Red Cross
in their booklet "Against the Wind - Protecting your Home from
Hurricane Damage", the loss of the garage door was one of the
four major factors in homes destroyed or damaged in Hurricane
Andrew. As the American Red Cross warns, once the garage door
goes, the full power of a hurricane enters the home, blowing
off the roof and resulting in major damage to, if not complete
destruction of, the home.
The National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration took
the photograph below after Hurricane Andrew. Note the six homes
in the center of the photo. Of these, the four houses on the
right lost their garage doors and also their roofs. The two
on the left retained their garage doors. While these two homes
experienced some damage to the roof tiles, their roofs and overall
structures fared much better than those homes whose garage doors
were lost.
Why is it so crucial to reinforce the garage door? Studies have
shown that hurricane winds exert the greatest pressure and suction
at the corners of a structure, which is the location of most
garage doors. A garage door is held in place only by the door's
tracks. Hurricane winds exert both tremendous pressure and suction
on the garage door, causing it to flex inward and outward. Consequently
hurricanes generate severe stress not only on the door but on
its supporting tracks as well. As the pressure builds, the garage
door pushes against and pulls away from the garage door tracks.
If either the tracks or door give way, the garage door blows
in or is sucked out. This allows the full power of the hurricane
force winds to enter the compromised structure and attack the
roof and walls. Homeowners focus on securing the windows by
applying shutters or installing expensive impact-resistant glass
yet this weakest and most important area, the garage door, is
often either ignored or inadequately protected, reducing the
value of investment in shutters or impact-resistant windows.
With the enormous number of attached garages in the coastal
states, failure to properly safeguard this single largest area
of vulnerability is a major weakness in overall storm readiness.
One stop-gap measure that some in the media have endorsed is
to back an automobile up against the garage door. Anyone who
believes that this is a viable approach for garage door protection
should go to a test laboratory and see what hurricane force
winds in excess of 100 mph do to a typical steel garage door.
They will quickly realize that their car is wholly inadequate
garage door reinforcement. Or simply look at the photo below
in which the hurricane blew in the garage door despite the two
cars inside, and then blew out the roof. Furthermore this tactic
is completely worthless in protecting the garage door from the
tremendous outward suction forces the garage door experiences
in a hurricane, which are often even more powerful than the
incoming winds.
So how do homeowners obtain the protection from hurricane winds
needed for their garage doors? Hurricane resistant garage doors
can be purchased but these doors are expensive and may require
a building permit for installation. Many models of these doors
are rated to provide protection against winds of only up to
120 mph, a wind speed that is exceeded hurricanes rated Category
3 and higher. Historically 40% of the hurricanes striking the
U.S. have been Category 3 or stronger. Hurricane shutters for
garage doors are expensive, can be cumbersome, and may also
require a building permit. Retrofit systems employing horizontal
bracing are available, but horizontal braces just strengthen
the door and do not reinforce the garage door's tracks, and
thus have limited effectiveness. The September 1998 booklet
published by the Institute for Business & Home Safety (in cooperation
with FEMA, building officials and insurance companies) emphasizes
vertical bracing for garage doors. This booklet, in its three
and only illustrations on retrofitting a garage door, shows
vertical braces not coincidentally similar to Secure Door's
patented product that attach to the header, garage floor and
to each hinge or door shackle on the door.
Click
here to see this booklet and note these illustrations of
vertical braces on pages 12 and 13 of the booklet (file pages
18 and 19 of 36)..
Without an understanding of the importance of protecting garage
doors in homes with attached garages, homeowners can gain a
false sense of security from buying shutters alone. The average
homeowner wouldn't think of putting shutters on just two or
three sides of the house, but a standard 7' x 16', 112 square
foot, unprotected double garage door opening likely exceeds
the window square footage on one or two sides of the average
home. Homeowners concerned with properly protecting their homes
from hurricane force winds should strongly consider Secure Door®,
the highly effective and very affordable hurricane protection
solution.
Make
your garage door a Secure Door®
©
2005 Secure Enterprises, LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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