Hurricane Protection for Your Home in Florida

Refer to the map on the right for view areas that need hurricane protection. Is your Florida home protected?

Benchmark contracting can get your home ready for the Hurricane season quickly and professionally! We professionally install hurricane shutters, impact resistant windows, hurricane storm panels, roll-up and accordions shutters, and impact resistant doors.

Hurricane Storm Shutters Options:
If you own a home in the South Florida area, you should seriously consider protection from a natural disaster with hurricane shutters or impact resistant windows.

We offer a complete line of professionally installed hurricane protection solutions. After inspecting and measuring all openings of your business or home for custom-fit protection, we give you a professional, easy-to-understand estimate. From the value-engineered estimate, you have complete control to choose the best protection option for you, your unique property and your budget.

On March 1, 2002, the Florida Building Code means stricter requirements of protection for homeowners and builders. Builders in coastal counties are required to strengthen houses to withstand winds of 110 to 150 miles per hour depending on location. This translates to the requirement of approved hurricane shutters or impact-resistant windows. All our storm protection products meet or exceed the Dade County Building Code and product approved materials.

What are the chances that South Florida will be hit by a hurricane?

Roll up Shutters
Accordion Shutters
Storm Panels
Impact resistant windows
Impact resistant doors Over the past 110 years, the center of a hurricane has passed within 75 miles of Miami, on average, once every 3.5 years. A major hurricane (Category 3 or higher on the Saffir-Simpson scale) once every nine years, and a Category 4 or higher (such as Hurricane Andrew) once every 15 years. These numbers may seem high, but the last 30 of the past 110 years have been a period of low hurricane activity in the Atlantic

Hurricane Shutters
If you own a home in the South Florida area, you should seriously consider protection from hurricanes and high winds and other natural disasters with hurricane shutters.

As a South Florida licensed contractor, we offer a complete line of professionally installed hurricane protection solutions. After inspecting and measuring all openings of your business or home for custom-fit protection, we give you a professional, easy-to-understand estimate. From the value-engineered estimate, you have complete control to choose the best protection option for you, your unique property and your budget.

An alternative to Hurricane shutters are impact resistant hurricane panels, built to withstand flying debris generated by hurricanes and high winds.

Why Should I Have Hurricane Shutters?

The security and piece of mind they provide is worth their price. Additionally, preventing loss from storms plus the added protection from vandalism, burglars and simple looting after the tragedy of a hurricane is a key justification. Insurance companies are moving toward requiring hurricane shutters before covering properties in hurricane-prone areas. We currently service Miami and surrounding areas in South Florida, including Fort Lauderdale, and West Palm Beach metropolitans located within Miami-Dade County, Broward County, and Palm Beach County.

Accordion Shutters
Protect your home: Let us install the most secure hurricane protection available: Accordion Shutters are especially effective for sliding patio doors or balcony doors, and offer maximum security and storm protection at less cost than Roll Shutters.

The top track of the shutter is parallel to the floor and provides the track into which the self mating extruded aluminum vertical blades glide from side to side on stainless steel and nylon roller carriages. The bottom track of the shutter provides a groove into which the pins on the bottom of the vertical slats are secured.

Easy to Store: When fully opened, the shutter panels stack in an area equivalent to approximately one inch for every linear foot of shutter (i.e. a 10 foot shutter would require about 10 inches of stack space at one end if designed as a single unit, or 5 inches of stack space at each end if designed to open it the center). The accordion shutter is manually operated, which means that you must have access to the shutter so you can open or close it by hand. This presents no obstacle if the shutter is mounted in front of glass doors or windows on the first floor or accessible from a balcony. But if mounted over an inaccessible window, operation would require the window to be opened and the screen removed in order to open or close the shutter.

Accordion shutters can be of any width. Their only restriction is in height, which is determined by elevation (first floor, twentieth floor, etc.).

The accordion shutter can be designed to open or close as one unit, moving left to right or right to left. For larger areas it can have a center opening, so that half the shutter would move to the right and the other half to the left.

Accordion shutters are less expensive than roll down shutters. Accordion shutters meet South Florida Building Code and Dade County Approved Materials.

Roll up Shutters
Roll up shutters installed by Benchmark Contracting offer the quick convenience of security and storm protection, not to mention the potential savings on energy costs. These easy-to-use shutters may be raised or lowered manually by hand crank, or automatically at the touch of a button.

Roll-ups will increase the overall value of your home and business, and of course, provide peace of mind. Available in a variety of colors.

These provide hurricane protection that meets code and protects your home, whether you're there or not when a hurricane strikes.

Impact Windows and Doors
PGT® WinGuard^TM Impact-Resistant Windows and Doors installed by Benchmark Contracting provides your home with effortless, full-time storn protection against flying debris and hurricane-force winds.

Now there's no need for inconvenient, unsightly panel, accordion or roll-down shutters or other hurricane protection devices. Even when you're away, WinGuard^TM Impact-Resistant Windows guard your home against hurricanes, storms and intruders with no effort, while reducing noise and providing UV protection!

Windows Engineered to Meet Hurricanes Head-On Hurricane Andrew, which caused such massive damage to Florida in 1992, taught researchers that violent winds alone are not the major cause of window failure.

The real cause is flying objects. As a result, codes for hurricane protection now focus on impact protection for windows and doors, not just wind velocity.

PGT WinGuard Impact-Resistant Windows and Doors combine heavy-duty aluminum frames with impact-resistant glass. A special silicone glazing process keeps the glass from breaking away from the frame. Although the glass may crack on impact, the interlayer keeps the glass intact, preventing destructive wind from entering your home.

Impact-resistant storm windows are comprised of two glass panes bonded with a special interlayer of clear polyvinylbutyral. Similar to auto windshields, it provides amazing protection against flying debris. Learn more...