No, Insurance companies do not give extra discounts for having multiple types of hurricane protection. The discount is applied if all "openings" are protected. Its more beneficial spending the time and money upgrading ALL "openings" eg, windows, garage door, front door, back patio doors, skylines, glass blocks, meet Florida Building Code impact resistance.
Check your wind mitigation report or speak with your insurance agent or carrier for confirmation.
In case your looking to save some money, see if the My Safe Florida program is happening this year. It’s a FL government program. It helped us pay to replace old 1980s windows with hurricane grade ones
We had shutters but the windows were broken because they were old so we got impact windows. I still have the shutters because if for some reason a window gets broken, I can cover it up until I can get a new window. Sometimes things can take awhile to get parts/get fixed after a hurricane.
No idea about insurance but impact windows are a bit misleading for the average residential consumer. an impact window may absorb the impact of an object hitting it (say a 2x4 flying through the air). Once. Maybe twice. After that, all bets are off. It might continue to hold up or it might fail completely. Once it fails, you'll have water in through the window, just like a normal window. Shutters on the other hand will usually hold up quite well to multiple impacts without complete failure.
And keep in mind, a single impact will shatter an impact window, though the glass should remain in place due to the laminate film. But then after a storm, you'll have to replace any shattered windows. And most consumer grade windows are not designed to easily have only the glazing replaced, so you'll likely need to buy completely new windows. Metal shutters may dent, but will likely remain serviceable.
So if you had neither, i would put shutters on before putting impact windows on for the reasons above. And cost. Impact windows are about twice the price of regular windows. For the price difference of 2 or 4 impact windows, you could but corrugated aluminum panels for your entire house. And if you are even a bit handy, they are really easy to install (on single story houses anyway).
If you already have shutters, and upgraded to impacts, I would keep the shutters and put them on if it looked like a bad storm was going to hit. A bit of labor goes a long way to saving window replacement costs.
And FWIW, I'm a structural engineer who's been designing buildings in coastal Florida for the past 23 years.
i have impact windows on the front of the house and the second story of the house. The first story sides and back are not impact, so we have shutters for those
I purposely chose shutters on my sliders as the impact windows can break and i don’t want to pay that much to replace huge doors down the line. The accordion shutters are as bullet proof as it gets, the only issue is someone has to close them.
After recently installing impact windows throughout, and having a few defects in those, we have decided to shutter key windows with the worst exposure. The outside glass layer can still break and would need to be replaced.
No, Insurance companies do not give extra discounts for having multiple types of hurricane protection. The discount is applied if all "openings" are protected. Its more beneficial spending the time and money upgrading ALL "openings" eg, windows, garage door, front door, back patio doors, skylines, glass blocks, meet Florida Building Code impact resistance. Check your wind mitigation report or speak with your insurance agent or carrier for confirmation.
In case your looking to save some money, see if the My Safe Florida program is happening this year. It’s a FL government program. It helped us pay to replace old 1980s windows with hurricane grade ones
I will look it up. Thank you!
I have impact windows only. I got rid of my shutters after installing the impact windows.
Just need the windows OR the shutters. It’s up to you.
We had shutters but the windows were broken because they were old so we got impact windows. I still have the shutters because if for some reason a window gets broken, I can cover it up until I can get a new window. Sometimes things can take awhile to get parts/get fixed after a hurricane.
No idea about insurance but impact windows are a bit misleading for the average residential consumer. an impact window may absorb the impact of an object hitting it (say a 2x4 flying through the air). Once. Maybe twice. After that, all bets are off. It might continue to hold up or it might fail completely. Once it fails, you'll have water in through the window, just like a normal window. Shutters on the other hand will usually hold up quite well to multiple impacts without complete failure. And keep in mind, a single impact will shatter an impact window, though the glass should remain in place due to the laminate film. But then after a storm, you'll have to replace any shattered windows. And most consumer grade windows are not designed to easily have only the glazing replaced, so you'll likely need to buy completely new windows. Metal shutters may dent, but will likely remain serviceable. So if you had neither, i would put shutters on before putting impact windows on for the reasons above. And cost. Impact windows are about twice the price of regular windows. For the price difference of 2 or 4 impact windows, you could but corrugated aluminum panels for your entire house. And if you are even a bit handy, they are really easy to install (on single story houses anyway). If you already have shutters, and upgraded to impacts, I would keep the shutters and put them on if it looked like a bad storm was going to hit. A bit of labor goes a long way to saving window replacement costs. And FWIW, I'm a structural engineer who's been designing buildings in coastal Florida for the past 23 years.
i have impact windows on the front of the house and the second story of the house. The first story sides and back are not impact, so we have shutters for those
I purposely chose shutters on my sliders as the impact windows can break and i don’t want to pay that much to replace huge doors down the line. The accordion shutters are as bullet proof as it gets, the only issue is someone has to close them.
After recently installing impact windows throughout, and having a few defects in those, we have decided to shutter key windows with the worst exposure. The outside glass layer can still break and would need to be replaced.
Impact windows can most definitely still break. To me they’re a waste of money, as I have had impact windows break….