Part 3 of 4: Wind Damage Protection In Parts 1 & 2 of our series, we discussed strategies to protect your home from rising water due to flooding or storm surges and from water penetration through the roof and walls respectively. This third segment is dedicated to safeguarding your home from wind damage that occurs with +100mph winds by looking at 3 critical components. First, design and materials considerations for such protection include: an aerodynamic roof-line combination of hip/gable shapes and making sure all tie-downs on the connections between the roof and the framing are hurricane code compliant.A quick internet search of storm damaged homes will show hundreds of images of destroyed homes that were blown apart because the components were not properly nailed together (we no longer just rely on nails). Secondly, a well built home will be of no benefit if all your windows and doors get blown out-- windows and doors are not the place where you want to cut costs! After all, they should last the entire lifetime of the home and they are the key components to preventing water intrusion. Make sure your builder includes Ply Gem windows and doors with impact-resistant glazing or a shutter system, which will provide protection from flying debris (achieving a DP50 or better rating). Although nothing beats a shutter system, we are trying to build to a budget and believe impact resistant glass provides excellent protection at a lower cost. Finally, a Design-Build builder or a good architect-builder team will identify specific areas of your home to use breakaway walls. This way when a wave does hit your home, the walls themselves intentionally break away from the structure without bringing the whole house down. Another beauty of break-away walls is that they do not cost a penny more to build!