While I was researching what kind of roll up hurricane shutters we needed, I happened to work with the son of a man with long experience in the shutter business in South Florida. I was surprised to learn that there is only one factory in Florida that makes parts for these. As a result, from what he said, all of the hundreds of companies that market these are essentially shutter “assemblers” using the same parts. So really there is no shutter that is superior to another, the main thing is to find a company that gives good service and prices. It appears to be different in Texas, I did find a large company in Galveston that makes shutters with more rugged specs than the Florida shutters. We went with Empire Construction in the Miami area mainly because of their Better Business Bureau rating and their large size. https://www.hurricaneshuttersflorida.com/
With four large rolldown shutters for the doors and five smaller ones for the windows the lead time for construction was about 5 weeks. They were a little late on that promise, but not too terribly late. I had them take the completed shutters to St Thomas Cargo in Miami for about an extra $100. When they arrived in St Thomas they were very well crated and in good condition.
After we got done unloading everything we had to figure out how to put the shutters up. Fortunately the company has some very good Youtube videos explaining the whole process so that even an Ex Fighter Pilot can figure it out. The most head scratching came later as we were trying to program the motorized big shutter. We called the company after a while and they were very helpful in helping us figure it out. As we were running out of time for this particular trip we decided to put only one of the big doors up on our entrance ramp.
One of the things you have to do is to get the “curtain” over the top of roller tube in the upper box of the shutter assembly. The curtain probably weighs at least 90 lbs and is hard to lift while standing on a ladder. We eventually got this first door up and running, but over the next couple of months while at home in Central Texas I thought about ways to do it easier next time. Here’s what I came up with:
The boards about a third of the way up are for me to stand on the ones at the top are for the curtain to rest on. Much easier than the previous method!
As we finished the color on the walls we were able to install the rest of the shutters. I did have to go back to the ladder method for the smaller ones covering the windows, but these were a lot lighter and not too much work.