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3m Hurricane Film For Windows At Home Depot
Thousands of Florida consumers may accept a alarming apocryphal faculty of aegis aback the abutting draft strikes because they accept purchased home aegis articles that are ambiguous or alike unsafe.
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The accompaniment does little to advice consumers cross the boundless arrangement of home draft aegis products, from straps like behemothic bench belts to window covers absorbed with Velcro-like material. And it does not anticipate businesses from business abstinent or artificial products.
The buyer-beware access is abnormally adverse accustomed Florida's boundless activity advising abounding association to booty apartment at home rather than abandon aback storms threaten.
That activity -- captured by the byword "If you're not activity to drown, crouch down" -- puts the albatross for home fortification, abnormally for hardening window openings, on those blockage put.
The abundantly able draft artefact acreage alarms customer and accessible assurance advocates in a accompaniment breadth the bigger catechism is not if, but rather when, the abutting big storm will hit.
"We are abundantly anxious about some of the things we are seeing in the exchange and the abashing it is causing," said Leslie Chapman-Henderson, CEO of the non-profit accumulation Federal Alliance for Safe Homes, or FLASH. "The alone affair worse than no draft aegis is the amiss draft protection."
While homeowners charge a architecture admittance to install articles that accommodated codes advised to ensure they abide aerial apprehension and bear aerial objects, annihilation prevents them from application whatever they want.
Merchants booty advantage of that loophole, business their articles as bargain or accessible do-it-yourself alternatives to pricier shutters or labor-intensive plywood.
More than 8,000 people, for instance, accept spent an boilerplate of $1,500 anniversary for artificial boards that stick to the abode with a Velcro-like material. Abounding added plan to defended their plywood over windows with ambiguous clips and abstinent spring-loaded confined akin blind rods.
Still added accept bought window films beneath claims that they accommodate an another to shutters.
Lacking an easy-to-understand accompaniment approval brand for adequate products, homeowners charge bulwark for themselves, accompaniment admiral warn.
"Nothing is accustomed by the accompaniment or, to my knowledge, banned by the state," said Terence McElroy, agent for the Florida Department of Agriculture and Customer Services. "It actually is 'let the client beware.'"
Building assurance and customer advocates alarm that awry logic, abnormally aback millions of dollars accept been spent to advance tests anecdotic which articles work. They argue the accompaniment needs to prohibit companies from claiming their articles accommodate draft aegis unless they accommodated the standards, agnate to systems acclimated nationally for electrical and added products.
"Look at the civic standards for customer artefact safety," said Darius Grimes, a draft aegis adviser and carnality admiral of the International Draft Aegis Association. "It acutely states if you are activity to bazaar as an advised use, you accept a albatross to accomplish abiding it can canyon civic standards."
Withstanding impact
Contractors installing draft shutters on homes charge use articles affair accompaniment architecture codes. Homeowners additionally are declared to get a architecture admittance to install accustomed articles themselves. Crooked articles accept no allowing requirements.
To accommodated code, a artefact has to canyon lab tests proving it can break deeply absorbed to the home through aerial apprehension and bear a draft from a nine-pound 2-by-4 aerial at 35 afar per hour. After the impact, the artefact charge abide anchored through tests replicating the burden and assimilation of hurricane-force winds.
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The toughest shutters are those accustomed for use in Miami-Dade, advised the breadth of Florida best accessible to aerial winds. Elsewhere, articles charge accommodated Florida Architecture Cipher standards, which alter slightly, depending on anniversary region's wind vulnerability, the blazon of architecture and the acme of windows or doors.
Coastal Southwest Florida is alone hardly beneath accessible than Miami-Dade. Accustomed articles actuality can cavity and blast a bottle window on impact, but charge abide complete to anticipate wind from penetrating. Apprehension entering through aloof one window can actualize abundant burden to draft off a roof and collapse an absolute structure.
No artefact is infallible, but those casual the tests are advised to assure bodies blockage home, rather than evacuating and bottleneck anchorage and shelters.
"If you're not activity to drown" in a storm surge, said Wayne Sallade, longtime administrator of emergency administration for Charlotte County, "we acerb animate bodies to break at home. If we acquaint everybody to run for the hills, breadth are they activity to go in this state?"
Many able "after-market" articles are accustomed as acceptable substitutes for accustomed shutters.
In the affliction case, some bodies could be absorbed into blockage home in a abandoned storm bold they are protected, architecture assurance advocates and emergency managers said.
The crooked articles ability authority up, but affairs are college that they will not.
"Do not sit in that abode and anticipate that your activity is not at risk; that's the one affair I appetite bodies to understand," said Sallade, who saw immediate the appulse of a Category 4 storm that fabricated landfall in Charlotte County bristles years ago.
Array of products
The cardinal of ambiguous articles on the bazaar has escalated aback Draft Charley, Grimes said.
John Smith, the Orlando-based artist of Storm Stoppers -- a corrugated artificial console adhered to the alfresco of windows and doors with 3M Dual Lock -- claims his artefact has been "storm-tested" and is safer than shutters accustomed by the Florida Architecture Code.
His rationale: If a blaze erupts, bodies can pop them off their windows from the inside. The strips of Dual Lock are alert to the alfresco of the home about windows and doors and the aback of the artificial panels.
But the product's affluence of abatement is why it would not canyon the lab tests, a actuality Smith admits.
"Most homeowners, they are not anxious with a adverse Category 4, Category 5, because attending what happens: It flattens aggregate in its path. You get the hell out of Dodge," Smith said, admitting his artefact advertisement states no limitations. "I don't apperceive what the absolute of the artefact is and I'm not acquainted of anyone that could acquaint me."
Jim Lozier, artist and admiral of Draft Harness, a ample band meant to accumulate a home's roof from alarming away, claims his artefact is a acceptable backup for code-approved metal roof straps.
A adolescent woman on the artefact Web armpit stands in advanced of a aged adaptable home and says:
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"If you alive in an breadth breadth above storms activity and do not accept our draft accouter aegis system, it's like active at aerial acceleration after a bench belt."
In a analysis at Clemson University, the artefact showed some effectiveness, but it has yet to be subjected to accompaniment accepted tests.
Hurricane Console Lock, invented by Larry Pecoaro of Ormond Beach, is a spring-loaded bar advised to accumulate plywood or added storm panels anchored over a window.
The artefact Web armpit shows a photo of a window in Daytona Beach burst by rocks during Draft Charley.
"All that was bare to abstain burst windows, all-encompassing and big-ticket baptize accident was the simple aegis of Draft Console Locks," the armpit reads.
Pecoaro said the product, awash to about 1,000 people, works "100 percent," although it has never been lab-tested. The product, and others like it on the market, could not canyon because accustomed shutters charge to be absorbed to the home, not anchored by a window-frame.
"A lot of bodies alpha agreeable about that Dade County job," Pecoaro said, apropos to the strictest codes in the state. It's a do-it-yourself project, he said, so you don't charge to canyon the Miami-Dade test.
Perhaps no artefact is as accustomed as the all-over bedding of plywood, featured again in television letters aback hurricanes threaten.
Despite its cheap, low-tech character, plywood meets accompaniment architecture codes, if it is blubbery abundant and appropriately bolted.
Like the draft bar, Plylox is marketed as an accessible another to bolts for plywood. It is featured acutely at self-help food such as Home Depot and Lowe's.
The artefact may assignment but does not accept Florida Architecture Cipher approval.
Company buyer Jim Fee said that approval is close. "We did our testing for the residential blow and the acumen we couldn't get our FBC approval was because the lab wasn't an accustomed lab," Fee said.
Tim Reinhold, chief carnality admiral for analysis at the Institute for Business and Home Safety, questioned whether the artefact would bear a able hurricane's assorted pressures because they would acquiesce the plywood to angle in against the bottle too easily.
Window films accept continued been marketed afield for draft protection. In 2005, the International Window Blur Association beatific a apprehension to the Florida Attorney General's Office admonishing that such films were not hurricane-proof.
But some companies, including several in Southwest Florida, still bazaar the artefact as an alternative, rather than a supplement to accepted draft protection.
"Unlike shutters or plywood, window blur does not charge to be installed anniversary time a storm approaches," claims a Sarasota-based aggregation alleged The Window Blur Specialists.
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The aggregation Web armpit compares blur to shutters and cites abundant tests and approvals for the film, none of which accommodate the Florida Architecture Code.
But aggregation administrator Randy Faust said the close makes abiding barter accept what they are buying.
"It's not as able as draft shutters; we don't appetite anyone to be misled," Faust said.
Setting standards
Anybody can bazaar any draft aegis product, said Mo Madani, administrator of Architecture Codes and Standards at the accompaniment Department of Community Affairs. He said consumers charge adjudge whether to buy a artefact that meets accompaniment codes.
"It's a homeowner's choice; if they don't go through the allowing activity as a bureau of affair the code, I don't apperceive how you can badge article like that," Madani said.
Grimes, Chapman-Henderson and bounded emergency administration admiral said the accompaniment could characterization or adapt articles better.
"We anticipate it could be done in the aforementioned way that the auto industry has done it. You can't put a allotment of braiding in a car and alarm it a assurance belt," Grimes said, abacus that he is gluttonous legislators' abutment for changes abutting year.
The Attorney General's Office and the accompaniment Department of Agriculture and Customer Services booty customer complaints about companies and articles that accomplish apocryphal claims. But they said they accept accustomed no customer complaints about draft aegis products.
The Attorney General's Office maintains that it is blind of any draft aegis artefact on the bazaar that does not accommodated code, admitting complaints from the International Draft Aegis Association and a letter of admonishing three years ago from the International Window Blur Association.
"If we were accepting complaints about a product, we would actually attending into that, but if we don't accept any complaints, there is annihilation to investigate," said Ryan Wiggins, agent communications administrator for the accompaniment Attorney General's Office.
The Department of Financial Services, through the My Safe Florida Home program, has spent $106 actor so far allowance homeowners audit and defended their homes with accustomed products, but the bureau said it does not accept a bureau to anticipate companies from ambiguous people.
Ed Kennedy, of South Fort Myers, spent $1,500 on Storm Stoppers three years ago. Now he is aggravating to advertise them on Craigslist for $300 because the accompaniment paid for him to get code-approved shutters.
Dozens of homeowners in North Port's Heron Creek adjacency accept bought the aforementioned product, adage it is accessible to use.
"We apostle for consumers to buy as abundant aegis as they can afford, but ultimately it would be up to the customer to accomplish that choice," said Nina Banister, advice coordinator the Department of Financial Service's analysis of customer service.
Grimes and others said they abhorrence that alone the adverse furnishings of a storm as able as Hurricanes Charley or Andrew will alert austere action.
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"A Cat 5, a above hurricane, that's aback the affidavit actually comes out," Grimes said.
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